SOURCE: Mantel, Hilary. “Escape Artists.” New York Review of Books 45, no. 17 (5 November 1998): 23-4, 26.

In the following excerpt, Mantel lauds The Last Resort but cites shortcomings in the novel's supporting cast and narrative structure.

It is dangerous to stray outside New England, to places where the chill predictabilities of winter are overlapped by the warm ocean currents of self-indulgence and self-deceit: to places where the bracing necessities of shoveling snow are replaced by the velvet and slippery deceptions of bodily warmth. Harry DeKroll entertains mild regrets for Key West in the days when it offered “the great escape,” for days when easily available mind-altering substances adjusted reality more effectively than today's intake of con leche and Oprah. Harry the Housesitter is the narrator of Ann Beattie's new story “The Siamese Twins Go Snorkeling.” He stands by and watches someone else get a life (and employ him to service it...