If there was any doubt that Mary Gordon was her generation's preeminent novelist of Roman Catholic mores and manners when she published her remarkable first novel, "Final Payments," it is dispelled by ["The Company of Women"]. In Miss Gordon's vision, the church seems to offer an ideal of perfection that dominates the lives of believers and apostates alike. Miss Gordon's new heroine is once again a defector from the church who, as if doing penance for having lost her faith, seems to constantly strive for a perfect act of contrition….

But "The Company of Women" presents us with a quandary: Is Miss Gordon's craft as a novelist keeping up with the grand and virginal boldness of her vision? (p. 1)

George Bernard Shaw once defined melodrama as "a simple and sincere drama of action and feeling … allegorical, idealistic, full of generalizations and moral lessons." Unlike "Final Payments," which was...