Amelia Larson is a crippled spinster dominated by the memory of her dead sister, whose painful diaries she is reading. She is uncertainly poised between past and present, like the old friends, relatives, and acquaintances who cluster around her. Embodiments of various generations, sexes, and life styles, they are people surprised by the intrusion of sexuality into their lives…. Yet loving proves their only escape from self-absorption. [Jane Rule] expertly renders façades that mask indecision, especially through dialogue. But [Against the Season] is too rigidly patterned: each character is a glaring thematic counterpart to some other one; every scene announces too loudly its structural function as some sort of "balance." The human element is there, but it is too obviously part of the design.