"Every writer establishes a role for themself in their books: Miss Nin's is that of psychoanalyst to her typical women. She has a single interest in her characters (I almost said patients) and that is in the formation and expression of their symptoms; what goes on in the rest of their lives she rigorously ignores…Every so often Miss Nin's writing descends from the feminine heights and indulges in straight commonsensical observation of human beings and even in undecorated prose. Then we recognize that somewhere in her Miss Nin has perhaps the powers that have always been necessary for good science, good fiction, good poetry. But such deviations are only occasional, so I wonder why a book like This Hunger...hasn't had commercial publication in these days when nothing sells like the sick psyche."