SOURCE: Davis, Alan. “Unseen Guests.” Hudson Review 47, no. 1 (spring 1994): 141-48.

In the following excerpt, Davis provides a favorable review of Millhauser's novella The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne.

[The Little Kingdom of J. Franklin Payne is] the best (and by far the longest) of the three novellas which comprise Little Kingdoms, Steven Millhauser's sixth book. By now, after such books as In the Penny Arcade and The Barnum Museum, his modus operandi is clear. His characters are convincing enough emotionally and his fiction is packed with ordinary detail, but his fictional premises and occasions are meant to remind us continually that we are in a subtle, fabulistic world. His puppets are visible in all of their elaborate, touching beauty; we are simultaneously watching the screen and walking behind it (a double perspective, by the way, which some Indonesian dalaans encourage spectators to experience; the danger inherent in...