The Scapegoat is, I think, an even better book [than Mary Lee Settle's last novel, Blood Tie. Like Blood Tie, it shows the inner workings of a prodigious variety of people, but these people are somehow closer to us, less brittle, more genuine, their contradictions and self-delusions more subtly dealt with. Hard-bitten Mother Jones ("sitting there dumpy like a sweet little old lady, about the shape of a keg of dynamite") grows as familiar to us as our own grandmothers. We see into the very soul of Annunziata Pagano as she coolly, firmly summons the Italian-mama hysteria that will help her control a crisis….
In one sense, The Scapegoat is a straightforward, linear novel. Its four parts cover, in proper order, a single period from 3 o'clock one afternoon to 8 o'clock the following morning. But in another sense, it's more of an octopus shape, with the repercussions from some events branching out to other events, years later, of which we're given glimpses. When I finished the book, I started re-reading it, telling myself that now I could pick up the hints dropped in Part I. When I found myself in Part II, still re-reading, I had to face facts: The Scapegoat is hard to say goodbye to. It's a whole slice of a long-ago world, with its leaves still rustling and its voices still murmuring—a quiet masterpiece. (p. 13)
Anne Tyler, "Mining a Rich Vein," in Book World—The Washington Post (© 1980, The Washington Post), September 28, 1980, pp. 1, 13.
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