Volume 50, Number 13 · August 14, 2003
Cold Comfort
By Gabriele Annan
The King in the Tree
by Steven Millhauser
Knopf, 242 pp., $23.00
More than any other current fiction writer I can think of, Steven Millhauser seems to really enjoy writing. He wallows in it, but in a dignified manner—if such combination can exist; and if it never has, then it does now and he invented it. You sense a thrill of triumph after each word or juxtaposition of words that have been meticulously chosen and licked into shape by a voluptuous tongue. In his book of three novellas, that applies particularly to the second two, both set in sumptuous evocations of past centuries.
Review, 1429 words
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