Since Mr. Roth's previous novels have contained a number of characters as solidly convincing as a fire engine, it is a surprise and something of a disappointment to find [The Ghost Writer] populated by bloodless intellectual conceptions. It is as though he had written an essay (and it would have been a very clever, penetrating essay) on "Possible Attitudes of the American-Jewish Author" and had then turned his argument into fiction by constructing a character to fit each attitude. It is still a sound argument, but it makes fiction once removed.

Phoebe-Lou Adams, "PLA: 'The Ghost Writer'," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1979 by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 244, No. 4, October, 1979, p. 108.