[The] smoothness with which ["The House of the Prophet"] proceeds from start to finish is very nearly slick. The important plot developments occur in elegantly spoken little tête-à-têtes whose surprising frankness serves the dual purpose of titillating the reader … and of bringing each scene to a quick and electric climax. What Mr. Auchincloss's technique seems to reflect is a closed little society that functions according to agreed-upon rules, wherein people know their own minds and get things done with the merest flick of their tongues.

As usual, this makes for pleasant, easy reading. But one is tempted to complain that in "The House of the Prophet," Mr. Auchincloss's technique is distinctly ill-suited to his subject. After all, Felix Leitner, the novel's protagonist, does not really live in a world in which the rules have been made up in advance….

[What] we must keep in mind is that it is not Mr. Auchincloss who has put together this book, but rather his persona, Roger Cutter, who is at best Felix Leitner's disciple and at worst, in his own pessimistic judgment, a pilot fish to Leitner's shark. It is Roger Cutter—a figurative court eunuch, owing to his diabetes-induced sexual impotence—who has solicited memoirs of Leitner's wives and friends, written a narrative that connects them with one another, and edited the resulting posthumous biography of Leitner. (p. 184)

The tension between the egotist who appears in Cutter's narrative and the truth-seeker who stands beyond its reach, is what gives "The House of the Prophet" its redeeming ambiguity.

Does the novel ever resolve that ambiguity? Not really, and that is the triumph of the book….

[As] the title of the novel announces, this is the domestic view of the prophet without honor in his own house. But we also glimpse the prophet abroad. By giving us both views, Mr. Auchincloss has not only surpassed the limitations of his technique, he has also turned those limitations to his advantage. This makes "The House of the Prophet" easily his best novel since "The Rector of Justin," and debatably the most accomplished book he has written to date. (p. 185)