SOURCE: A review of The Ivory Swing, in Times Literary Supplement, October 29, 1993, p. 22.

In the following review, the critic offers a favorable assessment of The Ivory Swing.

Readers who enjoyed Janette Turner Hospital's most recent novel, The Last Magician (1992), will take delight in The Ivory Swing, which was originally published in 1982. It tells the story of Juliet, an academic's wife who with her family is transplanted from the stultifying small-town atmosphere of a provincial Canadian university to the isolation of a South Indian village. Living for a year on the estates of Shivaraman Nair, a wealthy farmer and ostentatious patron of the arts, Juliet, her husband David and their two children are expected to acknowledge and respect the strictures of the high-caste household.

For Juliet, already half-inclined to rebellion by the frustrations of her domestic life, the situation proves intolerable. It is further complicated by the family's involvement...