SOURCE: McMurray, George R. Review of Album de familia, by Rosario Castellanos. Books Abroad 46, no. 2 (spring 1972): 275.

In the following review, McMurray praises Castellanos's portrayal of women in Album de familia.

The latest work by Rosario Castellanos [Album de familia], Mexico's leading woman author and presently her country's ambassador to Israel, comprises three short stories and one novelette, all of which portray feminine characters in more or less typical contemporary situations. “Lección de cocina,” the best of the collection, records the interior monologue of a young, career-minded housewife whose thoughts wander in phenomenological patterns as she inadvertently burns a steak she is preparing for her tradition-bound husband. The meat, shrunken and toughened through overexposure to heat, appears to symbolize the couple's marriage which is constantly being eroded by friction and rapidly approaching the inevitable breakdown. Here form and content fuse, the protagonist's fleeting psychic digressions reflecting not only...