THE PUZZLEHEADED GIRL

by Christina Stead ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 7, 1967

Miss Stead's greatest talent is creating slightly hysterical, vivid dialogue for her assortment of neurotic females. This was quite evident with Henny's raging in The Man Who Loved Children, and Nellie's brassy laments in Dark Places of the Heart. RelationshiPs quiver desperately in these family novels: frustrated, articulate wives or sisters and Plaintive, lop-sided husbands or brothers. They have it out in wordy battles but the distaff member always triumphs in fine arias of disgust and sorrow. A lighter, much pleasanter key sounds in the four short novels here, though the theme remains pretty much as before, perhaps summed up in Shaw's quip: ""Life does not cease to be comic because someone dies. Neither does it cease to be tragic because somebody laughs."" In the title story, an eerie waif mysteriously wanders through a set of dry, middle-class lives, disturbing the even tenor at odd intervals, finally winding up as a sort of myth, the eternally elusive free spirit, ""the ragged wayward heart of woman that doesn't want to be caught and hasn't been caught."" Voluble, laughing Lydia who can't take men seriously, and breathless Linda, the all-American maiden aimlessly fluttering in the lower depths of the Left Bank, occupy the center of the other tales, each a subtle, bizarre comment on the inadequacy of romance.

Pub Date: Sept. 7, 1967

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Holt, Rinehart & Winston

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1967

Categories: FICTION