Mrs Brinsmead's novels are for teenagers and are mostly about teenagers. No pre-adolescent child has a significant part to play in any of them. The teenagers come and go, as teenagers will, in a crowd; they are always on the move. The books themselves are full of warmth and energy and tend to have large casts, plenty of incident, and unusual richness of background. Not only do things happen; people change and develop. All Mrs Brinsmead's books are concerned with what she herself calls 'the problem of how to cope with life'. They are also concerned with the stage which comes before coping: namely finding out who and what you are.

She is particularly good at drawing the teenagers as teenager. Adolescent characters in novels by other contemporary writers (for instance Gwyn, Roger and Alison in Alan Garner's The Owl Service; Christina, Mark and Will in K. M. Peyton's Flambards) are shown as the people they essentially are and always will be. It is not difficult to imagine them at the ages of 25, 35 or 45. But Mrs Brinsmead's Syd and Sabie in Beat of the City, and Binny in A Sapphire for September, are specifically sixteen-year-olds, and their age is part of their character. Last year they were not as they are now; next year they will be different again; their self-discovery is still going on, and in discovering themselves they are still changing. (The difference here between Mrs Brinsmead and the other writers mentioned is not a matter of superiority or inferiority on either side; it lies partly in style of characterization, partly in the kind of person created.) And Mrs Brinsmead has an interesting way of moving into and out of her characters' minds, of seeing them now from inside, now from outside, in a way that gives perspective to her portraits…. If a generation gap exists—and in Mrs Brinsmead's books it exists in individual cases …, not as a general phenomenon—the author is on both sides of it.

A combination of sympathy and detachment in her treatment of teenagers is indeed one of Mrs Brinsmead's strengths. It is already apparent in her first book, Pastures of the Blue Crane…. Self-centred, stoical, snobby Ryl is one of those rare, infuriating heroines whom one doesn't much like but finds oneself caring about—presumably because the author, while seeing her clearly for the rather unlovable person she is, can also feel with her and perceive what she might become.

The four-dimensional character study of Ryl, over a period in which she changes greatly yet remains recognizably the same girl, is as fine in its way as anything Mrs Brinsmead has done. She has not again penetrated any individual to the same depth. Many of her young people are appealing, especially the girls: Gisela, the small person with the big voice and big boots in Season of the Briar; the cheerful urchin Binny in A Sapphire for September; sensitive Emma in Isle of the Sea Horse. But they are more lightly sketched than Ryl, and the reader does not become involved with them in the same way. This is probably because of a tendency to put a group, rather than a single individual, at the centre of a story. Gisela, Binny and Emma can be considered as the heroines of the books in which they appear, but they do not dominate the scene. (pp. 39-41)

[Beat of the City] is not only a book about what happens to certain individuals; it is also a portrayal of a city and a composite study of the life of young people in it; it is an exploration, too, of certain values and relationships. It is a bold and forceful novel and, taken as a whole, is Mrs Brinsmead's most impressive book up to the time of writing. Where many authors have found it easier to concentrate on the enduring realities of human nature if they avoid those immediate surface details which are so hard to get right and so sure to fall out of date, Beat of the City is uncompromisingly contemporary. 'In Melbourne in 1965 the way-outs were in', it begins; and the Melbourne of 1965—no other time, no other place—is the setting of this story. And, paradoxically but deservedly, the sense of immediacy has so far proved lasting, for although it is no longer 1965 the feeling that everything is happening here and now remains fresh and strong.

The plot of Beat of the City is worked out in intricate detail: the characters are carefully balanced. (pp. 41-2)

Each character in turn moves into and out of the spotlight; but in spite of the lack of a continuous focus the story does not fall apart. What holds it together is the most impressive element of all, the city of Melbourne itself. Melbourne is alive on every page…. (p. 42)

The theme of the novel is the pursuit of happiness, as carried out by various people in various ways through the streets, homes and haunts of the city. Sabie's mother, expressing what it is safe to assume are the author's own views, contrasts true happiness—something to be built from your own inner resources—with an instant, ready-mixed substitute symbolized by the Tootle Bird, a mythical creature that 'probably nests in a box of empty Coke bottles' and has a call like the whirring noise of a fruit machine. This direct expression of view comes in a natural way at an appropriate moment, and does no harm to the story; but it is a pointer, I think, to the book's major flaw. One has a persistent sense that the characters and action have been designed to illustrate this very message.

The clash of values is direct and simple. Sabie and Raylene both look for 'kicks', and both come close to disaster. Mary and, increasingly, Syd create their own pleasures and are sensible and constructive. The good girl Mary, whose approach to life is the opposite of that summed up in the quest for the Tootle Bird, seems to me to be altogether too good to be true. Pains are taken to indicate that her activities, such as folk-singing, dancing and playing the clarinet, are livelier and more with-it than canned amusements; yet the result is only to make her less convincing, less likeable. Like all excessively good fictional characters, she becomes a shade tiresome.

Emergence of the author's values is not in itself objectionable. In a story with a contemporary setting where the subject-matter, broadly, is what life is about, suppression would be difficult and in any case not praiseworthy. The point at which damage starts is when character or action is distorted, or the impression given that the story is only a vehicle for carrying a message. In Beat of the City the action, even if contrived, is strong, and the characters, except perhaps Mary, come alive as people. The damage is slight and the book can stand it. And it is possible that the author's strength of feeling about true and false happiness has provided the book's motive force, and is responsible for its power as well as its weakness.

Of Mrs Brinsmead's first five novels, the remaining three [Season of the Briar, A Sapphire for September, and Isle of the Sea Horse] are slighter than Beat of the City or Pastures of the Blue Crane…. These books are still concerned with 'the problem of how to cope with life', but they are less closely at grips and their situations are more specialized.

Mrs Brinsmead is a writer with several faults. The structure of her stories can be unsatisfactory: notably in Pastures of the Blue Crane, which falls away in the second half, and Season of the Briar, which lacks any clear focal point and never really pulls itself together at all. Her male characters are rarely memorable. She is apt to scatter minor figures around without taking enough pains to make them live for the reader, although it is plain that they live for her, and she even has an endearing habit in her novels of throwing parties for them. What is so attractive about her is her writing personality. There is a sense of the author's presence, of her sympathy with the people she is writing for and about. Her settings have ranged widely and are strongly realized. Her vitality compensates for a great many failings. The last thing one would wish on her, the negation of her true gift, would be a cool perfection. (pp. 43-4)