[Much] of Joyce Carol Oates's recent prose output has been an unpruned orchard of high gothic romance. The tales collected in A Sentimental Education are her newest transplants from the genre….

All six stories are plotless rambles through emotional terrain as bleak and autumnal as the settings in which they are cast. (p. 72)

Sound, not sense, is Miss Oates's strength; yet, frequently, her hypnotic cadences are shattered by a crescendo of unblushing hyperbole ("His blood surged, pulse upon pulse, in waves of clarity." "In his arms she was immortal."). Furthermore, there is no logical development or web of inevitability in the movement of her narrative. Each story seems to have been distilled from the subconscious effluvia of the moment. Wordy and vague, they are, at best, accessible only to the most indulgent and empathetic of readers. (p. 73)