SOURCE: A review of In the Heart of the Valley of Love, in New York Times, August 30, 1992, Sec. 7, p. 14.

In the following review, Quick writes that the narrative of In the Heart of the Valley of Love is lacking in focus and is poorly constructed.

In her second novel, Cynthia Kadohata has tried something extremely difficult: to take a story of the disaffected 1990's and project it 60 years ahead in time. What makes futuristic fiction work is an accretion of telling detail so convincing that the reader suspends disbelief. Unfortunately, In the Heart of the Valley of Love has lots of detail but very little conviction. The setting is Los Angeles in 2052, but the author seems not to have exercised her imagination: this is the smog-filled and crime-ridden city of 1992, with just a few differences (water and gas rationing; odd, unexplained skin diseases). Apart from some specific biographical...