SOURCE: "A Captive Black Leopard from Three Perspectives," in The New York Times, February 18, 1994, p. C28.

In the following review of The Great Divorce, Kakutani praises the novel's emotional depth and Martin's use of imagery, particularly that of the black leopard.

The novelist Valerie Martin seems to have a thing for horror movies. She also seems to have a thing for stories about the bestial nature of man. Her last novel, Mary Reilly, was a retelling of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson's classic tale about a Victorian gentleman in thrall to his ape-like alter ego. Her latest novel, The Great Divorce, turns out to be a kind of improvisation on Cat People, Val Lewton's eerie 1942 movie (remade by Paul Schrader in 1982) about a woman who believes she's possessed by the soul of a panther.

The difference is that while Mary Reilly...