SOURCE: "Hamlet, Though Not Meant to Be," in The Spectator, Vol. 274, No. 8691, February 4, 1995, pp. 28-9.

[Brookner is an English novelist, nonfiction writer, and critic. In the following review, she praises Isler's craft as a novelist and agrees with those critics who have favorably compared The Prince of West End Avenue with the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Saul Bellow.]

Since new talent invariably comes garlanded with prepublication encomia the potential reader is advised to adopt an attitude of caution. Alan Isler's novel [The Prince of West End Avenue], first published in America, has been compared with the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer and Saul Bellow: Cynthia Ozick has added her commendation. Can it possibly live up to such praise? It can, it does. The comparisons are not odious but they are very slightly wide of the mark. Singer is a mystic, Bellow an intellectual ruminant. Isler is...