SOURCE: Mantel, Hilary. “Figures in a Landscape.” New York Review of Books (11 May 2000): 17–18.

In the following review, Mantel commends Proulx's prose in Close Range, praising how Proulx “brings local and specific detail into focus for every reader.”

When writers of fiction go out to peddle their wares to the public, one of the favorite audience questions is “How long did this book take to write?” It is a question which makes sense to readers, obviously, and to journalists, who like to sift authors into categories like “late starters” and “overnight successes.” But it seldom makes sense to practitioners. Maybe it's possible to pin down the moment when a particular plot line showed its colors against the undergrowth, or when a shift of the light threw up a detail once invisible against its background. You can say where an idea begins, but not where a sensibility has its root...