SOURCE: A review of Bedside Manners, in Review of Contemporary Fiction, Vol. 15, No. 2, Summer, 1995, p. 201.

In the following review, Miller maintains that the "overlapping of military and personal struggles is what makes Bedside Manners so appealing."

Luisa Valenzuela's short novel Bedside Manners offers a fresh perspective on the difficulties of facing reality, specifically the reality of economic and political instability in an unnamed Latin American country. Valenzuela somehow manages to communicate this theme while creating a landscape that evades realism at every turn. The result is a playful account of one woman's quest to come to terms with her changing homeland and her fractured identity.

The protagonist, referred to only as the Señora, returns from New York to the country of her birth "in search of refuge" from the spiritually destructive world she inhabits. She takes up residence in a country club, where she is to rest...