SOURCE: “Following the Fall-Out,” in London Review of Books, March 19, 1998, pp. 22–23.

In the following review, Star provides an overview of Moody's thematic preoccupations and artistic development from Garden State to Purple America.

Like much of Rick Moody's previous work, Purple America charts the lives of the ‘slovenly, affluent’ young. It's not an especially good life. Moody's characters are distinctly unhappy, unformed, unable to proceed with their lives in anything like a reasonable way. Instead, they gradually succumb to a set of local problems. When the logic of crisis is put in motion, the outlook further darkens. In Moody's novels, to be born is a crime, and to grow up compounds the offence. The enclosed residences of American affluence are under a curse—nature and neuroses will contrive to bring them low.

Moody delivers this dark verdict in a casual, off-hand prose. His miniature family tragedies emerge through a...