SOURCE: "Declaring War on Men," in The New York Times Book Review, September 15, 1991, p. 11.

In the following review, Steiner offers tempered criticism of Mercy. According to Steiner, "Ms. Dworkin's argument, proceeding from pain, may be moving, but it is also intolerant, simplistic and often just as brutal as what it protests."

This past spring in London, with an hour to kill in a bookstore, I decided to read the first few pages of as many new novels as I could. Among the recent releases was Mercy, a second novel by the controversial feminist Andrea Dworkin, better known to me for her nonfiction tirades against pornography, against intercourse, against men. She was not a writer I would normally be drawn to, but in the spirit of experimentation I read through the first chapter. It was a representation of sexual trauma through a 9-year-old child's bewilderment, and I found myself...