["State of Grace"] was a startlingly good novel, and it pains me to have to say that "The Changeling" is a startlingly bad one. Miss Williams likes to take large risks, to try to go where no one has gone before. She is more drastic in her approach to character than any other novelist I can think of who is writing today. In "State of Grace," she survives the risks by the skin of her teeth and her narrow escapes have the effect of intensifying the book even further. But harsh as it may sound, I find that almost nothing works in "The Changeling." I admire the first book so much that I am tempted to take the position that only a very talented person could write as badly as Miss Williams does in her second novel.

The eccentricity of the characters in "State of Grace" seems to...