"If you are going to have lovers and a life of freedom and intellect, you have to expect unwed pregnancies and divorces and malice and mistakes," [said N., the protagonist of The Shadow Knows]. But just a minute. Is that really what a life of intellect implies? It's hardly a foregone conclusion … [and] all this reductive reasoning is difficult to go along with.

We are never told what's responsible for N.'s incredible passivity, why she is so devoid of energy, always acted upon, a constant victim. The only explanation seems to be her overweening guilt, so enormous within her that she must be punished over and over and reminded in brutish ways of her own worthlessness. But the reasons for this masochistic personality are never brought out. We are not told, for instance, why she was incapable of taking care of her children during her marriage. Her...