Adams, Alice | Kirkus Reviews (essay date 1989)
Kirkus Reviews (essay date 1989)
SOURCE: A review of After You've Gone, in Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1989, p. 1008.
[In the following review of After You've Gone, the critic finds that most of the stories in the collection are weak, although a few are "jewels. "]
It's too bad that Adams titled [After You've Gone] after the weakest of the 14 stories here—a smug monograph narrated by a jilted lawyer and directed at her poet exlover—because it may discourage Adams fans from delving further to sift out a few scattered gems.
In "Fog," for instance, as a small mishap redirects that start of a San Francisco dinner party and ends up changing the course of a few lives, it's pure Adams, toppling the exquisite social order to get to the dark—and often funny—truths below the surface. In "Oeracoke Island," elderly professor Duncan Elliott, on a visit to Manhattan, is a stirring, sharply etched character...
[The entire page is 358 words long]
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