SOURCE: "Austward Ho," in London Review of Books, Vol. 11, No. 10, May 18, 1989, pp. 12-13.

In the following excerpt, Parrinder states that "Prisoner's Dilemma is an intricate, wide-ranging tapestry drawing on the weightiest of historical themes; it is only a pity that its attempt to remythologise the most portentous of modern American events is so heavy-handed."

Richard Powers, as readers of Three Farmers on their Way to a Dance will know, is [a] young novelist full of ambition and ideas. What Prisoner's Dilemma sadly lacks, however, is [Paul] Auster's stylistic restraint and mastery of pace. Powers's prose bristles with verbal japes, hair-raising alliterations, manic allusiveness (the phrase 'a persistent grass-knollist' is the novel's one reference to the Kennedy assassination) and out-of-control metaphors. The author overwrites to such a degree that he gives the impression of being deeply insecure about the power of his words. What I found perhaps the novel's...