Her relationships with two roommates-one soon to be married, one desperately wishing to be-and her affairs with two men form the plot, which compares her life with those of her mother and grandmother, employing passages from the grandmother's diary. One Minus One (1971) is a character study of newly divorced Emily Bean, who fears being a single woman. The realism of Polly's struggle with an inadequate budget and other details of daily life is contrasted brilliantly with the almost mythic sense of fate that controls the novel's tone. As narrated sympathetically but unsentimentally by her lifelong friend, Jane, Polly Hall's attempt to be an ideal daughter, wife, and mother is symbolized by her efforts to restore her old home to perfection. One of the decade's most powerful novels, The Cost of Living (1971), opens with a massacre in a New England supermarket the motivation is then provided in a long flashback. The Lilting House contrasts several mother-daughter relationships, Felicia's and Celia's families, and the characters' various abilities to reconcile dream and reality. The inner story traces the late maturation of Felicia Polichnowski, an intellectual, imaginative woman married to a laborer. The Lilting House (1965) progresses from the point of view of the 'wise innocent' to the informed commentary of Celia, the narrator, as a young woman taking charge of her life Celia's development is the novel's frame. MacDougall's male characters are drawn in brief, telling strokes they are vivid but secondary to the women.

A frequent motif is female friendships between contemporaries or between a girl and an older woman who serves as mentor and confidant. Ruth Doan MacDougall's novels reflect her affection for the New England scenes of her youth a constant theme is regret and anger over the encroachments of 'civilization' on the natural beauties of the countryside. Born 19 March 1939, Laconia, New Hampshireĭaughter of Daniel and Ernestine Crone Doan married Donald K.

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