A Christina Stead Reader was presumably conceived with the hope of whetting interest in the work of this prolific and largely ignored writer…. Because she has written a lot … and, on the face of it, about many different subjects, she would seem to be the perfect candidate for publication in excerpted form.

The present volume is unmistakable evidence to the contrary: Christina Stead will not be nibbled at. She is a writer on the grand scale; she needs space—like D. H. Lawrence, whom she resembles in other ways—and to curb her is to make her look foolish. There is something architectural about Stead's prose which only justifies itself from the longer view; one notices rather quickly in these short takes that Stead is not really a stylist. She throws adjectives around indiscriminately—"The hideous low scarred yellow horny and barren headland …"—and she is rarely graceful...