Auchincloss, Louis | Anne Bernays (essay date 1992)
Anne Bernays (essay date 1992)
SOURCE: "Downtown Deities," in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, February 2, 1992, p. 2.
[Bernays is an American author and educator. In the following review of False Gods, she declares that Auchincloss's "language, world view and subject matter seem to be in a time warp," and that the author's dated style results in unrealistic characters.]
Reading Louis Auchincloss is a little like watching one of those engaging Victorian scenes in the window of a pricey department store at Christmastime, with elegantly dressed, animated doll figures executing a domestic choreography. In False Gods, Auchincloss's 32nd book of fiction, the author once again proves that he understands the nuances of what we used to call "moral dilemma" in a way no other American writer does. For him, the deadly serious moral dilemma is all—plot and theme, text and subtext.
Each of the six stories in False Gods...
[The entire page is 795 words long]
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