SOURCE: “Familial Failings,” in Times Literary Supplement, May 12, 1989, p. 518.

In the following excerpt, Bradham commends the engaging style and layers of detail found in Lucid Stars.

Andrea Barrett's Lucid Stars is about the ex-wives and children of a man whose indifference alienates them all. While the motif of stars verges on the excessive and cute, Barrett surpasses those of her predecessors who have written in a similar style about similarly fragmented families. Her style is clear and well paced; the finest achievement of the novel is the portrait of the two children from the first marriage, Cass, strong-willed and independent, and her younger brother Webb, sweet, simple and uncomplicated, and the deep-rooted tenderness and comfortable affection that exist between them. Her depiction of these two as they mature from small children into young adults, as they react to the same events—their mother's departure, their parents' divorce, their...