[In "Spinster," the] spinster in question is Anna Vorontosov, a teacher in New Zealand, working mostly among Maori children—sensitive, alive, unskilled in protective evasions, tortured by memories of a past sexual relationship that took some kind of unexplained wrong turning. Everything about her is credible, and yet one never catches oneself thinking, How well the author has imagined this character! One simply responds immediately, as if it were all happening in the room where one sits reading. Analyzed, Mrs. Ashton-Warner's technique seems quite simple; everything goes into the present tense, the voices of the children continually chime through Miss Vorontosov's unbroken solipsism, and nothing is allowed into the picture that might suggest an author, a sensibility outside Miss Vorontosov's. (p. 169)

"The hazards and glamour of communication" would be a good short description of what "Spinster," a first novel, is about—as if the continual presence of this...