SOURCE: Thorpe, Michael. Review of Discerner of Hearts, by Olive Senior. World Literature Today 70, no. 2 (spring 1996): 455.

In the following review, Thorpe provides a favorable evaluation of Discerner of Hearts.

The nine stories in Olive Senior's collection Discerner of Hearts are set in Jamaica, from the colonial period to the present day. Unfortunately, they are not chronologically arranged, so that “Zig Zag,” which clearly, like the opening title story, is pre-Independence, comes at the end, after “The Cho Choo Vine,” which glances at Rastafarianism. In most, black is not yet beautiful and white is the index of social advantage. Taken together, the collection, regardless of chronology, reflects a constricted society whose relationships are overdetermined by class and color; caste-power, or the lack of it, is constantly felt.

The viewpoint, with one exception, is female, in first or third person. At the center are two monologues which subtly blend Jamaican...