It is strange, though not crucial, that the factual basis of Emmeline is indicated only in a tiny preface many readers may miss—strange because a myth-come-true (of this sort, anyway) has added punch and at the same time stills impertinent questions about coincidence. This is presumably one purpose of a publicity release to reviewers, which tells how Rossner came upon the story of Emmeline Mosher of Fayette, Maine, how details beyond bare bones were difficult to verify (church records were destroyed ...

Like Parisians, shrinks leave town in August. If they're New York shrinks, they flock to the Hamptons, where for one brief month no patients interrupt their lives. The patients, meanwhile, must fend for themselves. Along with the shorter breaks at Christmas and Easter, the recurrence of the August hiatus lends a rhythm to both sides of the psychoanalytic relationship. Enduring it or delighting in it, patient and analyst must somehow come to terms with August—the ritualized intrusion of time in...

In Emmeline, Judith Rossner has taken on a plot of high improbable melodrama and come so close to making it believable that the part we cannot swallow scarcely bothers our enjoyment…. Of course, claiming an origin in fact does not excuse plots that creak or circumstances that collide with unlikely bangs. The weakest answer any novelist can ever give is that something was that way and therefore is so transcribed. Fictional truth is more shapely and more persuasive than reality. We know people more cle...

The modern heroines of Judith Rossner's recent fiction, Teresa in Looking for Mr. Goodbar and Dianne and Nadine in Attachments, were confronted with destructiveness, their own as well as the world's; Teresa was killed by a casual pickup, while Dianne and Nadine pressurized their husbands (who were Siamese twins) into being surgically separated, and then left them. Her new novel [August], without exactly brimming with optimism, has a new emphasis: on repairing damage, and living with scars. Aug...

Emmeline is a study in the psychology of victimization, and of survival. Circumstances thrust its heroine into the path of overwhelming historical, social and finally personal forces that thwart any attempt on her part to shape her own destiny. Yet she is never completely broken. Oddly self-contained and passive, more at home in the world of nature than in human society, Emmeline is shielded by an inviolable innocence from fully realizing the implications of her actions and experiences…. What is odd ...

Throughout August, Rossner conveys the seriousness and excitement of psychoanalysis. Doctor and patient participate in a great cultural experiment, anatomizing the myths that shape consciousness and behavior. Disappointingly, when Lulu and Dawn are not thinking interesting psychoanalytic thoughts, their thoughts aren't very interesting. Rossner has imagined engrossing inner lives for her characters, but she hasn't matched them with equally sympathetic or compelling outer lives. Love affairs ta...

If "Emmeline" is a novel it is Judith Rossner's sixth…. A prefatory note explains that the author heard about Emmeline from one Nettie Mitchell, 94, who knew her when "she herself was a child and Emmeline an old woman." Nettie herself might be a fictional device, but even if she is not, responsibility remains with the author to make the title character, her ordeal, relationships and milieu real. (p. 13) It is often discourteous and unnecessary to reveal a novel�...