SOURCE: Thomas, Rosanne Daryl. “Tender Is the Heart.” Chicago Tribune Books (25 September 1994): 3.

In the following review, Thomas asserts that Quindlen fails to deliver in the second half of One True Thing, but shows signs of becoming a first-rate novelist.

In One True Thing, Anna Quindlen's second novel and the book that inspired its author to give up her job as a nationally syndicated New York Times columnist and devote herself to the writing of fiction, Ellen Gulden is relatively fresh out of Harvard and sure of what she wants, with the cocksureness of those whom life has not yet tested. Ellen has a plum magazine job, a fast-track law student for a boyfriend and an apartment in Manhattan. She lives a train ride, and worlds, away from the suffocating intimacy of her hometown and likes it that way.

Ellen considers herself her father's daughter and absolutely not her...