populated by a wonderfully vivid cast of dreamers, wimps, social climbers, crackpots and lost souls, a book that forces us to reassess the American Dream and the crucial role that faith (and the longing for faith) has played in shaping the national soul.” Critic James Wood called it a "complacent historical saga". Writer and critic Joseph Bottum wrote in Commentary, "The story is perhaps a little sketchy, as though the book were an abstract for a novel rather than the finished thing, but it is a thoughtful and serious book, in places funny and in places sad, by a thoughtful and serious man, the prose master of his generation". In The New Yorker, critic George Steiner called the novel “awesome,” concluding, “Updike’s genius, his place beside Hawthorne and Nabokov have never been more assured.” In 2015, Publishers Weekly ranked the novel among its “Ten Best John Updike Books”. Honors The novel received the 1997 Ambassador Book Award for Fiction, presented by the English-Speaking Union. References 1996 American novels Ambassador Book Award-winning works Novels by John Updike Alfred A. Knopf books Family saga novels Novels set in New Jersey Novels set in Delaware