This novel, about three school-aged sisters, originally published by Viking Press 20 years ago, was hailed by the critics, made Time magazines Ten Best Fiction List in 1971, and won the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction in 1972. A British edition by Chatto and Windus in 1972 was equally praised, as the following review excerpt attests: As formulas for happiness go, theres a lot to be said for shared adversity; and if this can be enriched with a touch of group paranoia, so much the happier for one and all. Hence, when in 1939 the Bishop family have to leave their loved and lovely house on the Connecticut coast and plunge geographically and socially down, there is glory in this fall and survival, a vindicationof their sense of inborn aristocracy, savored more lusciously as things become worse and worse. Here they are penniless and stuck in this arid town of Ephesus, lodged in a crumbling shack on the edge of Niggertown: Fatheran immigrant Micawbercan only play-act hopelessly as the business of business, and the local kids are astounded by these girls eccentricities, their outlandish homemade clothes, the daft poetry of their arrogance. But it is the unquenchable sense of specialness of mere magical Bishopry, which holds them together against all common sense, so that the girls can take on Ephesus in all its horror and screw it stupid. Times Literary Supplement
