Ah, you may say, here it comes. Another Lapsed Literata has escaped the convent for the marketplace, there to hawk elegant self-portraits complete with stigmata induced by that Freudian demon, the Catholic Childhood.

Well, you would be right—and wrong. [Final Payments and The Company of Women]—both bestsellers—can indeed be read as familiar reverse-gear apologetics, Rent-a-Joyce sagas of guilt and liberation with a predictable dash of feminist rancor thrown in.

But, thanks to Miss Gordon's considerable, if uneven, talent, they are more than that. They are deft, thoughtful, often funny, and occasionally brilliant. This is not Maria Monk scribbling on the walls of the Women's Room, and I'm tempted to say "alas," because such unalloyed rubbish would be far less depressing to those of us still hanging on by the fingernails.

Both books present us with bright defector heroines from blue-collar Queens or Brooklyn who, after...