The Young Lions was one of the few genuinely praiseworthy "big" novels to come out of the Second World War. Unfortunately for Shaw it landed him with the legend (one he shares with his contemporary Norman Mailer with whom he was often compared) that he wrote his best novel first. His latest is going to do nothing to dispel that impression.

Bread Upon the Waters concerns the effects of misdirected philanthropy on a middle-class New York family—the Strands….

[If the plot] sounds implausible, that's because it is. Shaw has been afflicted with ideas. He has a moral point of view, a modestly stoical theory of how to cope with the contemporary world—in itself quite commendable—that he wants to put across through the medium of fiction, and if necessary at its expense. Only this can explain such lifeless characters, such turgid dialogue. And Strand, the central...