SOURCE: "A Hard Life in Haunted Spaces," in New York Times Book Review, May 14, 1995, p. 12.

In the following review, McCulloughassesses the narrative style of A River Town.

Traditionally, the annual announcement of the Booker Prize, Britain's most famous fiction award, comes accompanied by ready-made controversy. But when Thomas Keneally won in 1982 for Schindler's Ark (published in the United States as Schindler's List), the outcry was over an issue more basic than the usual squabble over quality. The book was non-fiction, the protesters said, and not a novel at all.

Such confusion over the line that separates fiction and nonfiction seems to be a typical problem for Mr. Keneally. But then few novelists are quite so invisible as he is. Like a master character actor, he disappears into his subjects. Whether he is dealing with Joan of Arc or the American Civil War or the negotiations leading up to...