Keep the Change follows a continuum of McGuane heroes from Nobody's Angel (1981) through Something to be Desired (1984), moving closer to a solution of the dilemma best characterized by McGuane's own remark about Something to be Desired: "it really is a case of a man discovering that a narcissistic crisis is going to bear penalties which are permanent." These novels, taken together, constitute a progressive working out of the problem of living as a man in contemporary America. Keep the Change is less stylistically clever than McGuane's early novels, and less labored in its humor, which gives greater cleanness and clarity to the prose.

To some extent the McGuane landscape has altered. His rhapsodic view of Montana serves as an antidote to the plasticity of American urban life so roundly vilified in his earlier novels.

This, like other sources of comfort, is only provisionally held, yet it...