SOURCE: A review of Isobars, in Boston Review, Vol. XVI, No. 5, October, 1991, pp. 27-8.

In the following review, Pearlman offers a tempered assessment of Isobars, which she finds challenging and vivid, but also confusing and indulgent.

The title story begins the collection. Maybe it shouldn't. “Isobars,” subtitled “A Fugue on Memory,” is a difficult piece of work. It borrows its form from the musical fugue: statement and counterstatement. This unlinear method of telling demands collaboration from the reader who has idly selected the book from the New Fiction table. He may put it down again, confused. The writer makes free with place names unfamiliar to an American: names like Ringwood and Ballarat. (Most of the stories take place in Australia.) The heroine of “Isobars” enters in a burst of wordplay as M: “for Made in Melbourne, maid in Melbourne, for memory itself.” Next she turns into Em, then...