Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Greenberg, Joanne (Goldenberg) - Robert C. Small

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ROBERT C. SMALL

When Eric, a handsome, shallow, charming man in his early twenties causes a terrible automobile accident, he is changed by the event and by his shock at the easy sentence he receives. Drunk and stoned, he kills all of the Gerson family, including three children, except the mother Helen. Later during his probation, he encounters Helen and despite the tragedy that he has caused, they fall in love and marry…. [Years later,] Helen and the … [children of this second marriage] are killed in a car wreck. After his grief has lifted a bit, Eric begins to wonder whether or not Helen may have arranged their first encounter, their marriage, and the second accident in order to satisfy her fierce sense of justice….

[The Far Side of Victory is] a strange and moving book that is about guilt and penitence, at least at first, but becomes a portrait of Helen, not Eric, and of the adult life that her childhood has condemned her to. It is a book that,...

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1. Introduction
2. George E. Gravel
3. Time
4. The Times Literary Supplement
5. R. V. Cassill
6. Haskel Frankel
7. The Times Literary Supplement
8. Brigid Brophy
9. Joyce Carol Oates
10. Roger Sale
11. Victor Howes
12. KARY K. WOLFE and GARY K. WOLFE
13. James R. Frakes
14. Paul Gray
15. Hilma Wolitzer
16. GERRY McBROOM
17. Sanford Pinsker
18. Ruth R. Wisse
19. Norma B. Williamson
20. Meg Elliott Garber
21. Robert C. Small
22. Susan Dooley
23. Gregory Maguire
24. Copyright

1. Joyce Carol Oates