SOURCE: "Shakespeare Meets Emma Lazarus," in The New York Times Book Review, May 29, 1994, p. 9.

[Pesetsky is an American novelist, short story writer, critic, and educator. In the following generally positive review, she notes that although Isler's novel has considerable emotional power, only Otto Korner, the narrator and protagonist, is a fully drawn character.]

Alan Isler uses to advantage the mythic power of the theater in his first novel The Prince of West End Avenue. But it turns out to be a distinctly unconventional sort of theater. As the story begins, a production of Hamlet is in rehearsal by a troupe whose actors are drawn from the residents of the Emma Lazarus retirement home on New York's Upper West Side. The fate of the play itself is uncertain, and chaos reigns. Death, you see, has already decimated the cast and threatens to do so again. In addition, all the...