["Contract with the World"] is a very fine novel, the third by the author of "The Desert of the Heart." It is an ambitious work focusing on the lives of eight friends, all in their early 30s, living in Vancouver. Most are artists, many are gay and the novel is, at heart, about both love and art and the politics of both…. [The characters's] lives keep shifting, turning, yet at some point all the characters make their "contract with the world," their commitment to life, to their own lives. At times the book is reminiscent of a Marge Piercy novel. It is big and complex and often remarkably insightful.

A review of "Contract with the World," in Publishers Weekly (reprinted from the August 1, 1980 issue of Publishers Weekly, published by R. R. Bowker Company, a Xerox company; copyright © 1980 by Xerox Corporation), Vol. 218, No. 5, August 1, 1980, p. 45.