'Tranquility is not the point at all in Oriel Cray's `Exit Left' (Penguin, 227pp., $7.95). With keen intelligence and wry humour her 'Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman' open the world of Australian bohemia in the '30s and '40s. Innocent though it all seems now, Gray's socialist upbringing, immersion in the theatre of the Left and the Communist Party — as well as her stealing of her sister's husband? — definitely won disapprobation in her day. She depicts the passionate commitment, fun and guilty failures of her youth with detachment and amused calm. Now I know who popularised the songs that were still around in my university days; what 'James McAuley was like in his wild youth; and how the coming of World War 11 interrupted some of the processes that would have cured the cultural cringe years before Australians finally stood tall. I enjoyed this crisply written and unsentimental book. ' (Veronica Sen review : The Canberra Times 24 February 1985 p8)