Books: The Belle Jar

(2 of 2)

Though she finds it degrading in Dixie, Daniell refuses to run: Southern women like to live dangerously. "The way I feel about being a woman in the South is the way I feel about the oleander that blooms in June: though it's said that the sap, even brushed against one's skin, is toxic, I carelessly break the branches, stick the ravishing flowers into my hair . . ." If Rosemary Daniell can turn down her volume without losing the force of blood, sex and anger, she just might turn out to be one of those fine female writers unique to her region (Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Katherine Anne Porter, Alice Walker, Caroline Gordon). If the South doesn't kill her first, that is.

— Donald Morrison