SOURCE: Saari, Jon. Review of The Palace Thief, by Ethan Canin. The Antioch Review 52, no. 3 (summer 1994): 530-31.

In the following review, Saari offers a favorable assessment of The Palace Thief.

Canin's four stories [in The Palace Thief] are novella-length and formally distinctive. The style is deceptively postmodern, pointing back to the classic fiction of John Cheever while clearly springing from a contemporary sensibility. This trick is a neat one, and Canin pulls it off. The magic comes from the directness of the prose and everyday settings. How can men so easy to dislike hold the secret to philosophical questions? Life is a game of cat and mouse where each of us plays at being tormentors in a Kafkaesque world. If Melville's Bartleby were to write a story, it would be The Accountant. Abba Roth, the narrator, has prospered not through risk but through restraint. He lost his chance...