SOURCE: “Novel Strains for Effect,” in Christian Science Monitor, December 14, 1992, p. 12.

In the following review, Rubin offers a negative assessment of Natural History, criticizing the novel's format and structure.

Maureen Howard's much-heralded novel Natural History, is a penitential, quasi-Joycean chronicle/collage that purports to do for Bridgeport, Conn., what James Joyce did for Dublin. Winner of a National Book Critics Circle prize for her memoir Facts of Life, and the author of five previous novels, Howard is a sincere and serious writer. Her intentions are doubtless worthy, but this novel never gets off the ground.

The central characters are an American family of Irish descent, the Brays, whom we first encounter during the later years of World War II. Jovial Billy Bray, the father, is a crackerjack police detective. His wife Nell is a gentle, extremely overanxious woman who can scarcely stand hearing her husband mention, let alone...