SOURCE: Richard Eder, "Meandering in a Dreamscape," in Los Angeles Time Book Review, October 8, 1995, pp. 3, 7.

In the following review, Eder claims that The Unconsoled is a complex and ambitious novel which becomes wearisome but is also rewarding.

Awake, we choose our life or our life chooses us, and we spend our days living out the consequences of the choice. Asleep and dreaming, we are haunted by all the choices we didn't make and their exfoliating consequences. A kind of vital mainspring usually lets us give priority to our daytime acts and keep at bay the infinite alternatives, which, if admitted, would bring us to a clogged halt.

Any choice or action, however virtuous or prudent, will cause some pain, loss or dilapidation somewhere, even if it is only for what is not chosen or done. Daytime's mainspring lets us lock down the possible guilt and regret for these...