SOURCE: Trombley, Stephen. “Loneliness of a 16 Year Old.” New Statesman and Society 3, no. 113 (10 August 1990): 35.

In the following review, Trombley compares Ford's Wildlife with Seth Morgan's Homeboy, praising Wildlife for lean, taut, dense storytelling.

With few exceptions, lyricism in novels goes in inverse proportion to length. A generalisation if you like, but it throws up a useful way of looking at this odd brace of novels, if only by way of contradiction. Richard Ford's new novel [Wildlife] is short and anything but lyrical, but it succeeds in a very difficult intention. Seth Morgan's first novel [Homeboy] is very long, is meant to be lyrical in every line, and succeeds only in defeating what is perhaps a doomed intention.

Ford, whose earlier novels have earned him a comparison with Hemingway—unfair, because Ford is the better writer—tells the simple story of a three-day episode in the lives of a...