SOURCE: Eder, Richard. “Some Things are Unforgivable.” Los Angeles Times Book Review (5 June 1994): 5, 15.

In the following review, Eder describes the principal characters of A Map of the World in the context of the novel's narrative structure and themes.

In a patch of Wisconsin woods, late on a summer afternoon, two women stand a few feet apart, each leaning her back against a tree and swatting mosquitoes. They face the same direction; neither looks at the other. They were best friends but Alice had a moment of distraction while minding Theresa's baby, Lizzie, and the child wandered off and drowned in the farm pond. Now, days later, Alice is almost mute while Theresa talks wildly, trivially, unstoppably: a frozen swimmer and a thrashing swimmer in a pond of bottomless pain.

Still thrashing, Theresa relates her visit to a former priest who was her high school teacher and whom she...