SOURCE: "The Readiness Is All," in Book World—The Washington Post, May 8, 1994, p. 5.

[In the following review, Schoenbaum notes some of the historical references in The Prince of West End Avenue and praises Isler as "a novelist to be watched."]

Yesterday, the narrator of this novel [The Prince of West End Avenue] tells us, he celebrated his 83rd birthday. The year is 1978. Eventually, he wryly observes, we'll find him just south of Mineola, Long Island, where he'll be taking up his subterranean residence. Otto Korner is his name—dropping the umlaut over the "o" being his first concession to America. These days he resides at the Emma Lazarus Retirement House on West End Avenue in Manhattan.

Who was Emma Lazarus? Students of New York's history and probably few others will know of her as a spokeswoman and forgotten poet ("Songs of a Semite") remembered, if at all, for...