SOURCE: Davis, Hope Hale. “Barricades and Gardens.” New Leader 65 (8 March 1982): 16-17.

In the following review, Davis notes an uneven quality in the sketches in Scenes of Childhood and reflects on her meeting with the author.

Reading this book [Scenes of Childhood], I gradually realized that almost everything that mattered to the author was either left out or skipped past or splashed over with a rather urgently whipped-up froth of spoofing. Almost, I have to emphasize: There are passages of sudden, seemingly involuntary spellweaving that match the best pages of her other works. That is saying a lot, both qualitatively and quantitatively. She published seven novels, 13 collections of short stories, six volumes of verse, and two biographies, besides her early political articles and literary studies, including a translation from Proust. She wrote a libretto for an opera based on the last days of Shelley, and when very young, having...