SOURCE: Hamilton-Paterson, James. “Voyages Out.” New Republic (6 May 1996): 38–41.

In the following review, Hamilton-Peterson provides a generally favorable assessment of Signals of Distress, citing shortcomings in the novel's flat characters and lack of emotional energy.

I must come clean. I have read only two of this much-praised writer's novels: his first, Continent, published in 1986 and Signals of Distress, his latest. I am not equipped to provide one of those overviews expected of critics when they deal with a writer who has a “track record.” That awful expression points up the idiocy of equating a writer with an athlete. Not only are expectations geared to the breasting of some winning tape (literary prizes, presumably), but by implication the race is always the same event, the same distance; the same book, in fact, written and rewritten with more or less address. Woe betide the writer who deserts the track for the...