SOURCE: "Where Everyday Life Intersects with the Magical," in The New York Times, June 12, 1990, p. C17.

[Below, Kakutani reviews several of Millhauser's short story collections, praising the writing style but finding several of the stories lacking in character or plot development.]

To read Steven Millhauser's fiction is to enter a fairy-tale kingdom of "the mysterious, the magical, the unexpected." Like his earlier books (In the Penny Arcade, From the Realm of Morpheus), The Barnum Museum is crammed full with amazing events, perplexing characters, strange exercises in sleight of hand. A magician conjures up the head of a girl named Greta, who takes on a life of her own ("Eisenheim the Illusionist"). A merchant sailor visits a distant country that is besieged by a giant bird ("The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad"). A lonely, unhappy man buys a postcard that slowly comes to life ("The Sepia Postcard").

Nearly all the...