SOURCE: “Taking Care of Mother,” in Washington Post, April 8, 1997, p. B2.

In the following review of Purple America, Nicholson finds the novel hindered by Moody's indulgent prose and “stylistic quirks.”

This novel about a day in the life of a troubled New England family opens with a scene of almost unbearable intensity as Dexter “Hex” Raitliffe bathes, clothes and spoon-feeds his mother, who's crippled by a debilitating multiple sclerosis-like disease. It's a poignant four pages that reaches for, and sometimes achieves, an almost religious solemnity: “Whosoever knows the folds and complexities of his own mother's body, he shall never die whosoever in this instant of sorrow and reverence, knows the answers to why roses bloom, why wineglasses sing, why human lips, when kissed, are so soft, and why parents suffer, he shall never die.”

If the rest of Purple America were as good as its opening section, the...