Readers whose simpler tastes run to a desire to know what an author is talking about will probably leave off after a few pages, pleading seasickness.” She described Boylen’s prose as “a heaving sea of words” and “an epic verbal bender.” Martha Schlegel of the Philadelphia Inquirer thought that Boylen’s conception outstretched her talent: “This novel combines a mystery story with a stream of consciousness technique to present a symbolic struggle between good and evil, the whole meanwhile being used as a vehicle for comment on the state of humanity. The opening lines of Mary McGrory’s review of Crow Field, Boylen’s first novel, in the New York Times captures what might attract some readers and repel others: “Anyone who things that a Dali canvas should be wired for sound or that the Ancient Mariner would be the perfect dinner guest should be entirely charmed with Crow Field. Though a few critics appreciated what she tried to do, most found her choice of characters and plots too weird for literary fiction yet not weird enough to fit with a genre label like horror or science fiction.

Her three novels were published in the age of Eisenhower and Father Knows Best, when men like Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs could get away with writing about outsiders and fringe lifestyles but women had to conform to stricter stereotypes. Margaret Boylen was a writer ahead of her time. Margaret Boylen, from the dust jacket of The Marble Orchard.

The moon on the water nina warner hooke