SOURCE: "Finding What's Left," in Hungry Mind Review, No. 30, Summer, 1994, pp. 16, 44.

Garner is an American critic, nonfiction writer, and educator. In the following excerpt, he offers a mixed assessment of The Great Divorce.

[Valerie Martin's The Great Divorce] has the kind of sprawling, personality-strewn narrative that you might associate with an Iris Murdoch novel. Four intertwined plots take off at once. Ellen is a veterinarian at a New Orleans zoo, and she's coping with the defection of her husband, Paul, for a younger woman. Paul, a historian, is busy researching a story from the 1800s about a famous "catwoman" who killed her cruel husband. (The catwoman's story is related in copious detail.) And Camille is an unrelated young woman who seems in some way to be a reincarnation of the catwoman; when she's abused by men—which is pretty often—she gets the urge to rip their throats...