The two sons and one daughter of Axel Jordache, a small town-on-the-Hudson baker, form the triangle on which ["Rich Man, Poor Man"]—as on an armature—is unshakably constructed….

Tom starts out as a ne'er-do-well, Rudolph as the priggish mother's bright hope, and Gretchen as the renegade. A vast, shifting circle of acquaintances, friends, lovers, wives and husbands springs up around them. The directions they take and the goals they actually reach differ drastically.

A wealth of know-how has gone into the fictional creation; even today, few of our younger technicians can beat Irwin Shaw's expertise…. Shaw whisks us off from a standing start to a velocity well beyond familiar limits. His pace doesn't slacken for chapter after chapter. Incidents lead to incidents—and they are uncommonly appealing. You don't really catch your breath until … well, until you ask yourself what it's all about….

But in a novel, alas, an ending is about as essential—and exactly as common—as a beginning. This one, though it finally runs down on page 723, could go on for a thousand more. Instead, the gate is lowered. The tale wavers and comes to a stop. It had a tiger in the tank—then suddenly it didn't. Rich versus poor, Shaw tells us, is not the fundamental criterion because good comes out of poor and not-so-good out of rich. But it wasn't for this bit of sermonizing that he wrote his novel. He wrote for the vigor, drive, and tidal rush of incident that is the body and bulk of his story.

"Rich Man, Poor Man" is exciting reading. It's a book you can't put down. Once you do, it wouldn't occur to you to pick it up again.