Rita Mae Brown's [In Her Day] disappointed me, despite my pleasure in reading of places I know and struggles I have lived—as well as in reading a story in which lesbianism, while an important part of the characters' lives, is a given, and not itself the central conflict….

My disappointment has two sources—one, a desire, simply, for more of the novelist's skill: greater differentiation between one character's voice and another's; more scenic embodiment and less summary explanation of characters' thoughts and feelings; more control of rhythms. Brown writes in the illusionist mode of "realistic" fiction, but the illusion of reality suffers from the characters' simple identification with their political platforms. There is optimism and strength in Rita Mae Brown's voice, but I miss the complexity, the risks, the irreducible paradoxes in our human experience that must be a part of the novelist's seeing us whole in...