In her 12th novel, Bernice Rubens has abandoned the small canvas for the large. Discarding the relatively modest yet always human situations that previously have been her subject matter, in "Brothers" the English novelist follows six generations of a Jewish family as they suffer through 150 years of unrelenting European oppression. The awful guilt that accompanies survival is a price nearly every character in this novel pays, over and over again….

Throughout, we are presented not so much with real characters as with names to whom action and lines of wooden dialogue are attributed. One after another, Bindels are born, bar mitzvahed (if they are male) and married, often in the space of a few pages. They then have children (two sons, usually) and begin their marionettelike march toward death. Miss Rubens seems determined to let nothing get in the way of the long span of recorded history she...