Instead of venturing an estimation of Isaac Bashevis Singer's eighth volume of stories, one might just as well reprint some review of an earlier collection and change the names, so nearly identical are his stories in subject, mood and outlook. In Old Love, as in practically every novel and volume of stories since Satan in Goray, Talmudic scholars pore over their tracts by day and surreptitiously open the Zohar and dream of women's breasts at night…. Such mischief is all very provocative, and yet it palls, and one has to take frequent breaks from dutifully reading and appreciating Singer to rub the eyes, massage the neck and restore circulation to the brain.

In short, I'm not wholly charmed by this … book, and I imagine that Singer himself has grown a little weary of this private universe—this superimposition of the ghetto upon the spirit world—that he has...