Negative Positive
Title: OUT OF HIS ELEMENT
Review: Charles Baxter's forte is the short story, and he has written some good ones. In this novel he is using characters he has written about previously in short stories, namely the titular Saul and Patsy, and unfortunately when expanded to novel length the characters just don't ring true. This is particularly true of the main character, Saul Bernstein, an East Coast university professor transplanted, via academia, to a midwestern college town. To me, Saul's character is cardboard and one-dimensional - the sort of character a writer might concoct after reading the works of far superior Jewish writers such as Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, and Phillip Roth, and then trying to create his own pastiche of a troubled "Jewish man" confronting a sometimes alien, sometimes hostile, sometimes frightening world. In comparing Mr. Baxter's creation with the works of the forenamed authors, I'm afraid the highest rating I can give his new novel is one star out of five.
Is the review positive or negative? 