a family romance
ELIZABETH POLLET
It's a long shot, of course ... but maybe our ed itorial enthu-
siasm justifies hyperbole ... anyway, here at New Directions
we have a wild hunch that Elizabeth Pollet, whose fi rst novel
we have just published , just might develop into the Jane
Austen of her day. A preposterous idea 7 Perhaps. Yet in this
story of an American family-in which we see how the ties
that bind may also become the tensions that divide-there is
more tha n a hint of the deep perception and grace of phrase
that ma rk the write r of real genius.
TIME: "One of thi) minor literary phenomena of the '40's wa s
t he rise of the utterly self-assured, or cold-poached-eye schoo l
of female novelists. Such gifted writers as Mary McCarthy
and J ea n Stafford ·comma nd a cosmopolita n confidence tha t
makes a lot of t heir male counterparts read like sentiment al
softies raised on Louisa May Alcott. Since the new school is
now th reatened with overcrowd ing, it is a relief to find New
York- bo rn Elizabeth Pollet en rolling elsewhere with her first
nove l. A Family Romance has its faults, but t hey are not those
of the self-a ss urance school; at its best, A Family Romance
achieves a ra re, fres h tone of youthful warmt h a nd wonde r ...
El izabeth Pol let explores the world . .. as if it had never been
seen before. . . ."
Paul Engle in THE CHICAGO SUNDAY TRIBUNE: "The prose
of this first novel is so finely clea r and transparent that, like
quiet water, it is often hard to realize what depth it contains.
It is, indeed, almost an a nti-prose, as if the author had deliber–
ately kept her verbal manner down to the plain word and t he
d irect phrase, at the opposite extreme from so much compli–
cated modern prose.... The story moves so casually it would
be wrong to summarize it. Nor could one catch the origi nal
insights into personality, nor the decisive shifts of mind which
are t he book's leve l of reality."
PHILIP RAHV: "The remarkable quality of Elizabeth Pollet's
nove l is its absol ute emotiona l honesty. One se ldom comes
upon a work of fiction in which truth is made to serve the ends
of art with such intensity and unity of effect."
NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE: "Written with commendable
simplicity a nd honesty, the novel has perceptive flashes that
ill umi nate both the painfu l un certainties of youth and the
ambivale nce of family ties."
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