SOURCE: MacDonald, D. R. “More Dreamy Dreams.” Book World—The Washington Post 25 (3 September 1995): 6.

In the following review, MacDonald notes the inconsistent quality of the Rhoda stories in The Age of Miracles.

“You might have heard of me,” Rhoda Manning says in “A Wedding in Jackson,” one of the stories in this collection [The Age of Miracles]. “I'm a famous scandal in some circles in the South.” A familiar figure in Ellen Gilchrist's fiction, from In the Land of Dreamy Dreams to Victory Over Japan, from precocious brat to noted writer, Rhoda at her best has a brassy wit, a kind of overbearing Southern charm. Now 50ish, “mellowed,” less concerned with having sex though still sexually frank, her drinking problem, failed marriages and passionate affairs behind her, she still loves to talk about herself. But by the end of the collection, even her fans may have heard enough. Fortunately...