SOURCE: A review of In the Briar Patch, in The Sewanee Review, Vol. LXXI, No. 1, January-March, 1963, pp. 115-22.

In the following excerpt, Bryant offers a highly favorable review of In the Briar Patch.

George Garrett, a young writer whose publications in verse and fiction should leave no doubt about the high quality of his gift, seems to share O'Connor's attitude toward the short story. The rough spots that characterize even the best of the stories in this collection testify to his ability to let a story discover itself; for if Garrett's stories are sometimes not quite finished, they are also never finished off. The title story, "In the Briar Patch," wanders somewhere along the road that stretches between Br'er Rabbit's "Please, Br'er Fox, don't throw me in de briar patch" and Hamlet's "rather bear those ills we have / Than fly to others that we know not of." It...