SOURCE: "When Harry Met Hilly," in Book World The Washington Post, Vol. XXII, No. 39, September 27, 1992, p. 3.

In the following review, Yardley proclaims the autobiographical nature of Love's Mansion, West's fictionalized biography of his parents' marriage, of less importance than his successful contemplation of love and marriage.

Paul West takes the title of this, his 14th work of fiction, from a line by Diane Ackerman: "Love's mansion has so many rooms." It is an image that persists throughout the novel, the subject of which is the strangely affecting romance of a man and woman closely modeled upon West's own parents: The houses in which they meet, court, marry, live and die have many rooms, all of them consecrated to different purposes, yet all of them containing a love that somehow survives the years.

That the novel is autobiographical is interesting but in the end unimportant; what West makes of...