[The Street] follows the tradition of hard-hitting social commentary which characterized the Richard Wright school of naturalistic protest writing. The Street is perhaps the best novel to come from the followers of Wright. [Miss Petry's] last full-length adult novel, The Narrows …, depicts Negro life in a small New England city, a subject not often treated in black writing. (p. 193)

A depressing work, The Street follows the thesis implied by this type of naturalistic writing: namely, that the black poor in the ghetto do not have much of a chance to live decent and meaningful lives, to say nothing of happy lives….

In an article that appeared in The Crisis Miss Petry tells us her objectives in this work:

… my aim is to show how simply and easily the environment can change the course of a person's life….

I try to show why the Negro has a high crime rate, a high death rate, and little or no chance of keeping his family unit intact in large northern cities….

[Country Place] follows in the tradition of small-town realistic fiction that goes back to Main Street…. (p. 194)

Country Place deals with the class lines between aristocrats and nobodies, the antiforeign, anti-Roman Catholic prejudices, and the sexual looseness and the ugliness and viciousness found behind the innocent-appearing life in a small town….

In The Narrows … Miss Petry has depicted Negro life in a small New England city…. Miss Petry seems to be saying in many different ways that these ghettos in small New England cities are far more isolated and cut off from the mainstreams of American life and are far more sterile than the black districts of border and Southern communities….

In The Narrows the author incorporates many of the racial myths well known to Northern-born Negroes and to those who have gone North for an education, especially a New England education (p. 195)

The major plot of The Narrows deals with a theme that was to become fairly popular among Negro writers in the 1960's: that of the relationship between the black man and the white mistress/wife. Through the soul-searching of her principal character, Ann Petry analyzes this relationship in considerable depth. (pp. 195-96)

Though it certainly holds the reader's interest, The Narrows has serious weaknesses as a novel. First, the author leans too heavily on flashbacks to tell her story. There are too many of them, and after the first few they begin to irritate. Second, Miss Petry puts a heavy strain on our "suspension of disbelief" when she asks us to believe that it would take an intelligent boy like Link Williams two or three months to find out who his girl friend actually was. And third, Ann Petry tries too often to create suspense by having her characters in moments of crisis think back, sometimes for as long as three pages, over past incidents in their lives. Although it may have its aesthetic value, this kind of interior monologue as used by Ann Petry somehow fails to impress.

The Narrows is an exciting work, and it does give us a fresh background, which is sorely needed in Afro-American fiction, but it is not a strong novel. Strangely enough, Miss Petry's delineation of white small-town New England life in Country Place is more convincing than her depiction of black life in The Narrows. The Street is Ann Petry's most impressive novel. (p. 196)

The short stories of Ann Petry show a great sensitivity. They tend to deal with those subtle aspects of racial hurt which are not always understood by nonblacks…. Miss Petry's voice is low when she speaks of the tragedy of ghetto living in these stories—the broken homes, the deserted children, the faithless wives, the young girls going on the street—and it is more effective than shouting. These stories show a genuine concern for the unfortunate victims of American racism, and the sincerity of her feelings comes through in the stories. They also show an artist's concern for structure and effect….

The word competent best describes Ann Petry as a writer. She does several things well, but none superlatively. Her short stories will probably stand up best after the critical years have passed judgment. (p. 197)