SOURCE: A review of Paradise News, in World Literature Today, Vol. 67, No. 1, Winter, 1993, pp. 181-2.

In the following review of Paradise News, Thompson praises Lodge's narrative skill and humor, but finds shortcomings in his treatment of profound theological issues.

As in a number of his earlier novels, David Lodge in Paradise News is both very funny and serious—in that order. Funny, in that his treatment of a group of British tourists who disembark for a vacation in Hawaii after a long and exhausting flight from Heathrow often verges on the wildly hilarious; but also serious, in that his central character, Bernard Walsh, who teaches theology in England—having earlier abandoned the priesthood and the Church along with his faith—has now to cope with dilemmas in commercialized Honolulu that turn out to be as ethically important as they are incongruous.

If David Lodge is serious about his...