Final Payments is a work of casuistry concerned to examine the conflicting demands of morality, especially Catholic morality. Isabel Moore, the heroine, blunders about, discharging ruin and agonizing about whether she is behaving well. It would be reassuring to feel that Mary Gordon knew she had created a Pharisaic monster and would dissociate herself from sympathy with Isabel's lethal spiritual struggles. This is not made clear and I was left with the feeling that perhaps Isabel was intended by her creator to represent Heroic Virtue or something of the kind….

[This] book invites judgement by moral, even more than by purely literary, criteria. (p. 23)

The characters in this book are static, in the sense that at the core of their being lies not a psychology but a morality.

They are almost 'humours'. Thus, although they interact they cannot change or evolve. Liz, the hard-bitten, but softhearted, girl-friend will...