SOURCE: “Tales of Two Cities,” in Women's Review of Books, Vol. 10, No. 3, December, 1992, p. 20.

In the following review, Pool argues that the series of “natural, social, and personal histories” portrayed in Natural History do not add up to a compelling whole.

Anyone seeking to pinpoint the nature of the contemporary novel will have a rough time of it. Wearing old-fashioned stays, postmodern garb, or singular outfits with no designer labels at all, our novels march their many ways, fulfilling the possibilities or landing in the pitfalls of their chosen modes.

Both of these novels, for example, revolve around an American city and family, American lives and life. But from Maureen Howard's Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Marilyn Dorn Staats' Atlanta, Georgia, lies an enormous fictional plain. Staats in her modest first novel invites a traditional suspension of disbelief. Howard in her extravagant sixth does a tango with the very concept...