SOURCE: Allen, Brooke. “Exercises in the Sensational.” New Leader 85, no. 1 (January–February 2002): 28–29.

In the following excerpt, Allen criticizes the sexual premise and Minot's “shoddy” writing in Rapture.

The novella form sneaks in and out of fashion. At its best—in the hands, for example, of Henry James, Gustave Flaubert or Joseph Conrad—its spare structure imposes shape and discipline, and it can achieve a formal perfection that eludes the broader, more sprawling novel. Often, though, the novella reveals itself as merely a failed, or aborted, novel, a creature too frail and fleshless for full artistic life.

This is the case with two new attempts: Joyce Carol Oates' Beasts and Susan Minot's Rapture both weigh in at barely more than 100 pages. Oates and Minot are capable, professional writers; if they have chosen the confines of the novella form, one would like to think it is because they know what...