SOURCE: A review of The Cockatoos, in The New York Times Book Review, January 19, 1975, pp. 4, 37.

In the following review, Welty discusses how the six short stories in The Cockatoos have similar themes involving characters who “come to a point of discovery” by confronting their problems.

These [the stories in The Cockatoos] are six stories (a few are short novels) to do with lives often driven or hopeless, but what they are ultimately about is what might have been. They bring together the possibilities and the impossibilities of human relationships. They happen in Australia, Egypt, Sicily, Greece, where they go off like cannons fired over some popular, scenic river—depth charges to bring up the drowned bodies. Accidentally set free by some catastrophe, general or personal—war, starvation, or nothing more than a husband's toothache—Patrick White's characters come to a point of discovery. It might be, for instance...