SOURCE: Vachss, Andrew. “Brownmiller's Cry of the Children.” Washington Post 112, no. 49 (23 January 1989): C4.

In the following review, Vachss criticizes Waverly Place for failing to address the link between spousal abuse and child abuse.

Journalists report facts. Politicians spin facts. Novelists spin yarns. The aims and constraints of these varied professions interact and overlap when a novel is used as the vehicle for the subsurface explanation of events that capture the public's fancy. Or its revulsion.

A novelist is permitted, even expected, to relate the narrative from a social-political perspective. Thus, if the novelist believes that poverty is the root cause of crime, he or she writes from that belief. This is morally and ethically acceptable—novels may be designed to persuade as much as to entertain.

Lisa Steinberg's death was national news, not because she was a child when she died, not because her death appeared to be...