[Christina Stead] appeals through the oddness of her characters and the relentless, uniquely resourceful dialogue through which she creates them. But the very amplitude of her portraits demands a significance she finds difficult to establish. The baby-talking egoist Sam Pollit [in The Man Who Loved Children] never comes to represent colonial condescension, though Stead hints at the connection, just as Nellie Cotter, in last year's Dark Places of the Heart, never quite distills the cant of England's welfare state. Since the novellas which make up [The Puzzlehead Girl] are both short and witty, they don't seem aimless; but, for the most part, they are scarcely more edifying than her novels.

"The Dianas," for example, portrays a nervous, virgin tease, who is apparently an object of satire. Juggling dates like a busy executive, Lydia satisfies none of her admirers, preferring to give her attention to the love-crossed girlfriend [Tamara...