"… Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated," was the quotation that her senile, spiteful grandmother had pointed out to Louise [in Jacob Have I Loved]…. This theme of twin-envy is set on a small island in Chesapeake Bay, the setting made vivid and colored by local idiom. The story is told by Louise in retrospect, after she has broken away from the island and found her own career and her own family; it is brought full circle when she (now a nurse in a mountain community) delivers twins to a patient; the first is healthy, the second frail and needing attention, and Louise tells the newborn infants' grandmother to hold the first-born, "Hold him as much as you can." A strong novel, this, with depth in characterization and with vitality and freshness in the writing style. (pp. 60-1)
Zena Sutherland, in a review of "Jacob Have I Loved," in Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, Vol. 34, No. 3, November, 1980, pp. 60-1.
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