In the following excerpt, Elman praises Green's novel for its quality as a fictional memoir and for its imagination.

[The Dead of the House] is one of the most important works of fiction I have read in quite a while. It is not "major," propounds no theories, participates in neither rear nor avant-garde maneuvers. Hannah Green's novel simply is, a family chronicle and a fictional memoir—always spontaneous, rich in atmosphere, its feelings specified, felt, projected. A beautiful book, nowhere bigger than itself, nowhere grander than its own scope or subject. It has been shaped with the caressing skill of a lover of people and words, but the words do not take over and perform a sideshow, and the people aren't always that lovable, and Hannah Green is aware of that, too....

I mean to say that I was not simply reading about childhood, or girlhood, or...