SOURCE: "The Muses Answered the Missus," in Washington Post, December 22, 1992, p. C2.

[In the following review, Thornton provides a plot synopsis of The Garden Next Door, and defends his view that there is "no better meditation on the agonies of writing" than the one presented in this novel.]

The entrance to Writers' Hell isn't marked by Dante's "Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here!" but by the resounding "No!" thundered by an agent. Out of that little damnation the Chilean novelist José Donoso has fashioned a bittersweet story laying bare the psyche of an artist on the verge of failure, a man well past 50 who is deeply aware that his life's blood is going into every sentence of a book that may not be good enough to publish.

Donoso has already produced seven books to considerable praise, and this latest novel to be translated into English will further...