May Sarton is very good, has always been very good, in suggesting personal bonds which hover on the edge of what we used to call "irregularity." Subtly placed and sketched in, they are often unknown to the persons themselves but for us they serve to deepen the understanding Sarton permits us of her characters' motivation….

Although I persist in my feeling that "As We Are Now" (1973) is still May Sarton's best fiction, I find "Crucial Conversations" moving, in a way that few of her novels are. It is not without flaws, it is not prime Sarton, but then we are still waiting for what we have always expected she would some day do, and has not yet quite done. Her work gives us the sense of the perpetually promising; we look back over a just-read work with regret born of our recognition of her partial success. Here the...