SOURCE: "Shavian Shavings," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 3742, November 23, 1973, p. 1417.

In the review below, the critic admires The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl, but dislikes Brophy's "ostentatious" display of her own erudition and "verbal dexterity."

It was Brigid Brophy who "devised" that enjoyable literary game in which television viewers could try identifying quotations quicker than the pundits. They would have had fun guessing the author of some items in Miss Brophy's new volume [The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl]—a bedside book for the irreverent intellectual. There are some Swiftian fables, a conte or two to please bright kids, and chop-logical conversations such as Lewis Carroll would have appreciated; the title refers to a Socratic dialogue, with echoes of Peacock, a cast that includes Voltaire, Samuel Butler and (of course) "the elderly gentleman with white hair and a...