Strauss, if he would treat himself (and his reader [of Marlenes Schwester: Zwei Erzählungen]) to some continuity, could surely tell a gripping story; he is wonderfully exact at times. If it were all intended the way it reads, one would have to question the solidity of [its] "narrative means." As it is, there is much faddish non sequitur in all this which leads to little else but disruption of many well-spun threads in a narrative web which the reader is never allowed to contemplate in its entirety.

R. Exner, "German: 'Marlenes Schwester'," in World Literature Today (copyright 1977 by the University of Oklahoma Press), Vol. 51, No. 1, Winter, 1977, p. 98.