Bodily Harm, a constantly diverting novel, fairly breathes narrative grace and skill. (p. 1)

The novel has flaws. One is narrative design run riot. There are first-person sections, set in Canada, told in the past tense, with un-quote-marked dialogue; and there are third-person sections, set on St. Antoine, told in the present, with dialogue in quotes.

So far so clear: But one understands near the end that the first-person sections are being told by Rennie to Lora in the jail cell they share; and that this setting is also the justification for the several first-person passages from Lora's point of view—passages that have had the reader rapping the walls for secret passageways. Logically, and in hindsight, it all hangs together, but fiction ought to cohere in the reading, not in the reading explained.

A more serious flaw is that the novel-of-adventure element is permitted to run so far that this wonderful book becomes hard to take with full seriousness. As it thickens with drastic events, the foreshortened plot leaves less and less room for character, often squeezing it out of the story entirely. Rennie becomes a passive observer, a narrative convenience, now posted and now moved wherever she can see the action best.

Rennie's character (who she is, the choices she makes) doesn't affect the plot; and in turn the plot, though it sweeps her up along with everyone else, finally affects her least of all (only she can fly away from it). A close relationship of mutual influence between plot and character is what distinguishes literary from genre fiction. The perfect brilliance of the writing insists that this novel is by birthright literary, but it finally sells that birthright for a delightful mess of delicious plottage. (p. 2)