Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Zindel, Paul (Vol. 26) - Mary Silva Cosgrave

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MARY SILVA COSGRAVE

The effect of a tragic home environment on three tormented souls—a widow and her two teen-age daughters—is tautly dramatized in … [The Effect of Gamma Rays On Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds. Paul Zindel] has drawn upon his fond recollections of his mother's preposterous schemes for getting rich quick to tell a sad and sometimes funny story. The characters in the play, like the marigolds in the scientific experiment, undergo mutations, some good, some bad. The mother is embittered by a life of disappointments and shattered dreams; a woman scorned and scornful, she is cruel, though capable of compassion. One daughter is beyond hope, jealous and vindictive, full of fears, and subject to convulsive seizures. The other, having been inspired by a science teacher, wins a prize for her experiment on marigolds and discovers there are galaxies out beyond her harsh world which offer her the kind of chance her mother lost and her sister never...

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1. Introduction
2. Diane Farrell
3. Zena Sutherland
4. The Times Literary Supplement
5. Marilyn R. Singer
6. John Rowe Townsend
7. Diane Gersoni-Edelman
8. The Times Literary Supplement
9. Mary Silva Cosgrave
10. Zena Sutherland
11. BEVERLY A. HALEY and KENNETH L. DONELSON
12. Isabel Quigly
13. Zena Sutherland
14. Isabel Quigly
15. Stanley Hoffman
16. Joyce Milton
17. Maxine Fisher
18. Jack Forman
19. Cyrisse Jaffee
20. Sally Holmes Holtze
21. Peter Fanning
22. David Rees
23. Paxton Davis
24. Judith N. Mitchell
25. Margery Fisher
26. A. Thatcher
27. Copyright

1. Paul Zindel