SOURCE: “Immigrant Families, at Home and Yet Alienated,” in The New York Times, March 23, 1993.

In the following review, Kakutani offers a mixed assessment of Poet and Dancer, praising Jhabvala's ability to write with “fluency and poise” but noting a vague dissatisfaction in the “predictable” ending.

Both the themes and the characters of Poet and Dancer, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's 11th novel, uncannily echo those of In Search of Love and Beauty, a novel she published exactly 10 years ago. Both novels concern the fragmentation of family life experienced by immigrants in New York. Both novels feature a similar cast of people, including gurulike charlatans who seduce wealthy women with their promises of salvation; older matrons who end up leading lonely, desperate lives, and the offspring of these people, who drift aimlessly through life in search of love and connection.

This time the reader is introduced to Anna and Siegfried Manarr...