SOURCE: Morrice, Polly. “Observing Washington.” National Review 52, no. 9 (22 May 2000): 72-3.

In the following review, Morrice argues that fans of Mallon's previous work will be pleased with Two Moons, noting Mallon's continuing use of “unfailingly graceful prose.”

Toward the end of Thomas Mallon's 1994 novel Henry and Clara, the heroine Clara Rathbone reflects on a phenomenon of post-Civil War Washington, D.C.: the influx of female clerks who toil in government offices. For the beleaguered Clara, whose husband is sliding toward insanity, these women lead seductive lives; she envies their “impoverishment and freedom and [imagines] herself as one of them.”

Just such a woman is the central character of Two Moons, Mallon's absorbing new work of historical fiction. At 35, Cynthia May has been on her own for years, living precariously in Washington boardinghouses. As the story opens, in the spring of 1877, she seeks to better her current wages by landing...