SOURCE: Rowlands, Penelope. “A Gentle Defiance.” San Francisco Chronicle (25 October 1992): Sunday Review section, p. 3.

In the following positive review, Rowlands commends the complexity of the protagonist in Folly.

Set in Boston before World War I, Susan Minot's new novel offers a haunting perspective, not only on an earlier generation, but on our own era as well.

The protagonist of Folly is a proper Bostonian named Lilian Eliot. Like every other woman of her class and generation, Lilian has a predictable and clear future. She will marry—suitably, of course—and have children. To fail at this mandate would be inconceivable. The life of Lilian's aunt, a spirited spinster named Tizzy, is a kind of cautionary tale. Yet in Tizzy Lilian finds a kindred spirit, one whose life—although deemed tragic by the society around her—seems surprisingly fulfilled.

Lilian is a mild young woman, docile by today's standards...