SOURCE: "Haunted Household," in The Women's Review of Books, Vol. XI, Nos. 10-11, July, 1994, p. 47.

[Rich is an American critic and fiction writer. In the review below, she praises the thematic focus and stylistic features of Hula.]

Lisa Shea is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in several prominent publications; she is the recipient of a 1993 Whiting Writers' Award. There are rumors that Hula is autobiographical, in the way so many first novels are. If this is the case, there's a strong temptation to offer up paeans yet again to the ability of human beings to survive.

The narrator of Hula and her older sister live in a rundown suburb in Virginia; the time is the mid-sixties. The children's mother, who used to be a dancer, and who taught the hula to the girls, is now a passive witness to their abuse, and to the disintegration of...