SOURCE: Ratner, Rochelle. “Categorically Writing.” American Book Review 15, no. 4 (October 1993): 31.

In the following review, Ratner offers mixed assessments of A Rosellen Brown Reader and Before and After.

Call it modernist, postmodern, experimental, or whatever you want. It seems as if fiction writers have two choices these days: (1) to abandon plot and sometimes character as well (or at least interaction between characters), concentrate solely on language and its ability to stand on its head and do tricks; or (2) to be a traditional, unliterary, unpoetic (a.k.a. boring) writer. For those would-be literary writers who can't let it all hang loose, there seems to be no middle ground. And they suffer because of it. As Brown says in an interview contained in A Rosellen Brown Reader:

Every day when I get up and look at what I've done the day before, I try to eliminate what I used to...