I Sent a Letter to My Love is a short, winning novel, almost an entertainment. (p. 46)

Rubens, who has written several other novels, seems a natural fiction writer, an expert at ringing changes on the commonplace…. Rubens's characters are, from the start, stunningly believable, and she is not afraid to let them change, be inconsistent, reverse themselves. Amy's moods are as shifting as Welsh weather. Her slides from brazen action to stiffened shyness are unforeseeable, and usually funny. Rubens has a formidable with but she uses it lightly, almost off-handedly. The ending is both cruel and melodramatic. If the author had pumped it up at all, the book would have been spoiled. But she deals out the Evanses' fates quickly, modestly, and evenly, like Beryl Bainbridge (to whom the book is dedicated) or Muriel Spark before them. (pp. 46-7)

Martha Duffy, "Women in Love," in The New York...