SOURCE: Prose, Francine. “To Have and Have Not.” Newsday (8 August 1993): 33.

In the following review of The Rest of Life, Prose praises Gordon's portrayal of complex female characters, commenting that the stories are engaging and thought-provoking.

If, as Chekhov wrote, a story runs on “the engine of he and she,” Mary Gordon's new book, The Rest of Life, is firing on all cylinders. The three novellas that make up this thoughtful collection are about men and women, sex and power, the body and the spirit, what connects us and what separates us, what we deserve and what we owe. The first of these fictions, “Immaculate Man,” is narrated by a social worker who deals with battered and abused women, and who embarks on a serious love affair with a co-worker, a priest who is a virgin at the age of 43. The narrator of the second novella, “Living at Home...