SOURCE: Grossman, Judith. “Free Spirits.” Women's Review of Books 8, nos. 10-11 (July 1991): 40.

In the following excerpt, Grossman lauds the authenticity of place in Quindlen's Object Lessons but criticizes the author's tendency to put everything in order at the end of the novel.

The girl child, a heroine of strong character and candid speech, has been a presence in fiction ever since Jane Eyre and Alice in Wonderland. And these two first novels by Deirdre McNamer and by New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen demonstrate her perennial vitality, just at a moment when the psychological studies of Carol Gilligan and others are focusing on a peak in girls' self-confidence that precedes the clamping-down of social and cultural pressures at puberty. In the tradition of a sharing of subjects and insights between fiction and psychology, Rima in the Weeds and Object Lessons each celebrate a child's freedom—and each in...