SOURCE: MacCurtain, Austin. “Bleak Houses.” Sunday Times (London), no. 8508 (30 August 1987): 37.

In the following review, MacCurtain criticizes Temporary Shelter, asserting that its narratives seem contrived and poorly structured.

“Nora remembered how they had laughed together. John and Delia were the only ones she knew who laughed like that and who were married.” Apartness, anxiety, an apprehensive sense that life is happening somewhere else and that not much of it is pleasant, informs many of the stories in Mary Gordon's Temporary Shelter. Nora, a child from whose perspective at different ages three of these stories are told, has reason to feel apart. Born with one leg shorter than the other, she is excluded from the games of other children, and as a young woman is denied the opportunity to be a teacher. From behind the shield of her handicap she observes her family and their relationships. Her conclusion from her...