SOURCE: Birkerts, Sven. “Family Secrets.” New Republic 207, no. 6 (2 November 1992): 40-2.

In the following review, Birkerts praises the premise of Before and After, but believes the characters lack depth and dimension and that Brown doesn't follow up on some of the novel's themes.

The title of Rosellen Brown's latest novel, Before and After, is misleading on a literal level: apart from a short impressionistic evocation of the Reiser family in happier days, the book is really focused upon after, on what transpires in the private and public lives of that family as the horrible facts of a killing come to life. But in the deeper sense, which is the sense toward which the narrative would steer us, the circumstances are in every way related to the before, to the assumptions about life once fostered by the Reisers and the members of their community.

Before, the chronological before, is given...