[Maxine Kumin's] powers of observation, interpretation, and phrasing are as strong as Updike's and less marred by moral perversity, excessive symbolism, and fine writing. But her novel [The Passions of Uxport] is as preoccupied as his [Couples] … with animal decay and the struggle to conquer the fear of death. And her narrative also suggests that sexual loss though not the whole of this fear, is central to it. Hallie's mysterious stomach pain, which sends her eventually to a psychoanalyst, is the novel's dominating fact. It is called "death," but we see that it has much to do with the fact that her husband will be away a great part of this year, that his adulteries have for the first time been discovered, that her children are growing beyond her care, that her niece's predicament arouses old resentments concerning her early marriage and hysterectomy, and above all that it...