SOURCE: Wilhelmus, Tom. “Various Pairs.” Hudson Review 43, no. 1 (spring 1990): 147–54.

In the following negative excerpt, Wilhelmus objects to the protagonist, plot, and tone of My Secret History.

Much of the pleasure in preparing a chronicle like this lies in seeing how the various new books stack up against each other. In the current selection, for example, six have very conveniently chosen to arrange themselves in pairs. By treating them together, I hope to highlight some of their strengths and show how various writers tackle some important literary problems. Nonetheless, at the outset I want to say that I have not excluded any new work from this selection simply because it had no counterpart with which to compare it. Simply, the discovery of a book that refused to match up (a truly incomparable new novel or collection of short stories) would be a treasure much to be wished for and...