SOURCE: "On the Lam from Race and Gender," in The New York Times Book Review, August 3, 1986, p. 7.

Bradley is an American novelist and educator; his works include South Street (1975) and The Chaneysville Incident (1981). In the following review, he analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Dessa Rose.

Two things can happen when poets venture into fiction. They can approach the business with the arrogant (or naive) assumption that they already understand the purposes and problems of fiction, and end up producing books which, while sometimes pyrotechnic in terms of poetry, are duds in terms of prose. This, alas, is the usual case. Sometimes, however, a gifted poet comes to the novel with a humble determination to do what fiction has to do: tell a story worth telling. The product in this case is not only good fiction, but fiction enlivened by symbolic connections and daring imagery—elements that those...