SOURCE: “Still Almost on Target,” in The Spectator, August 30, 1997, p. 29.

In the following review, Christiansen offers a positive assessment of Virgin Islands, though he argues that some of Vidal's themes are repetitive and predictable.

Some years ago, a ridiculously handsome young photographer friend of mine told me about the piquant experience of snapping Gore Vidal at his home in Ravello. ‘Oh to be in England, now that England’s here,’ Vidal intoned lasciviously as my friend walked in. I don’t think it went any further.

But yes, he does seem to love England so—not the landscape particularly, not even the people, but the nuances, the irony, the sly, telling understatement which is meant to be so marked a feature of our cultural manner. America, you feel, simply doesn’t get him. Many of the best items in this otherwise rather thin collection of his essays of...