'The Delivery Room' by Sylvia Brownrigg

The problem of alienation -- from others, from one's family, from one's culture and ultimately from oneself -- drives the story of "The Delivery Room," the fourth novel by American-cum-British novelist Sylvia Brownrigg. A stylist of taste and reserve, Brownrigg's prose flows like the literary equivalent of the beige drone of NPR playing in the background -- always rational, modulated and strangely comforting, no matter the trouble being described.

By Samantha Dunn

November 24, 2008