SOURCE: “Lights, Camera, Confusion,” in Washington Post Book World, February 11, 1994, p. 2.

In the following review, See offers a tempered assessment of In the Palace of the Movie King, noting a lack of plot or progression in the book.

Reading In the Palace of the Movie King is like doggedly climbing an escalator that keeps going down. There’s no forward movement, no plot, and since Hortense Calisher is such an accomplished novelist, with such a long and distinguished career, you have to assume that’s her choice: She’s through with plot or straightforward story. She’s doing something else, and if you can’t get it, that’s your problem, not hers.

This novel is set in Albania, Hollywood and New York City. The people who wrote the press materials here must have been more than usually at sea about this material: They describe the hero, a...