SOURCE: “On Target,” in National Review, September 19, 1980, p. 1151.

In the following favorable assessment of Off Center, Mano examines Harrison’s major thematic concerns and narrative style.

Ignore the absurd title: Barbara Grizzuti Harrison has a centripetal drive: things suck down to the middle here. Yet she is no ambivalent observer: not a U Thant of the soul, laying out fact like Congoleum tile. BGH writes with metered passion: and with the axis pain that a spinal tap has. She degausses her material: neutralizing both positive and negative charge. Splendid work done at risk: that steeple-high risk you associate with lightning rods. She can detect the fracture point: a midline where human issues, from stress fatigue, craze on their surface, then fall apart. Where society, in isolation, will start talking to itself: and no one can be sure which half of our schizoid I is just personable impostor: which...