Literary.

"[Liz's] nightmares allow McBride to register his disgust at the contemporary violence that blights some poor black neighborhoods, but they never seem to really belong to Liz, who remains a beautiful cipher. She's not the only character who seems half-formed." SHARON BROUSSARD

Minneapolis Star Tribune ***

"Song Yet Sung pits slaves against slave catchers and 'good' slave owners against the innate immorality of slavery in a tale that is surprisingly adventure-heavy yet still finds time to suggest that 21st-century black people aren't living up to the sacrifices their ancestors made to be free. ... [McBride's] need to make a statement marred his judgment as a novelist." CHERIE PARKER

CRITICAL SUMMARY

After a moving tribute to his Jewish mother (The Color of Water, 1996) and a novel about African American soldiers in World War II (Miracle at St. Anna, 2003), jazz musician and composer James McBride reaches even further into the past to explore the complexities and unpredictability of human nature against the backdrop of slavery. Based on actual historical figures, including Harriet Tubman, McBride's novel starts slowly but soon develops into a suspenseful, action-packed adventure. Some critics objected to the blatant social criticism in Liz's dreams of modern-day African Americans (described by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as "frankly offensive imagery and the polemic they clearly represent"), and a few cited flat characters and overly modern idioms. However, throughout this compelling and thought-provoking novel, McBride skillfully weaves his timely message that slavery can persist in many forms.

ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

THE COLOR OF WATER:A Black Man's Tribute to His White Mother (1996): This remarkable memoir alternates between McBride's own childhood memories and those of his mother, a Polish Jew who immigrated to America, alienated her family by marrying a black man, and raised 12 biracial children.

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****

The Soul Thief

By Charles Baxter

Purloined personae.

Nathaniel Mason is a graduate student in Buffalo, New York, in 1973 when he first encounters Jerome Coolberg, a character who is alternately described as empty and profound. Besides putting the make on a mutual love interest, Coolberg starts to appropriate Mason's identity, telling stories pulled from his past and "borrowing" personal items so he can write a character based on Mason into his novel (as the devil, no less). The consequences of Coolberg's psychological breaking and entering put Mason's fragile identity at even greater risk, but we must wait for the second half of the novel, set 30 years later, to discover the full significance of the soul thief's crime.

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Pantheon. 224 pages. $20. ISBN: 0375422528

Boston Globe ****

"The talented Mr. Baxter is not afraid to frustrate our dramatic expectations, even knowing that our longing to know the characters more intimately will not go away. ... [Baxter] knows that we write about what keeps us up at night, that a writer gets to inhabit many lives, and that he who tells the story makes the meaning." JOHN DUFRESNE

San Francisco Chronicle ****

"Baxter's adept at circling us slowly around the mirror, then thrusting us suddenly in front of it, demanding that we acknowledge ourselves in it. He brings us to a boil slowly, reaching a crisis point--and a pyrotechnical twist at the book's end--without our seeing it coming." JESSE NATHAN

Cleveland Plain Dealer ****

"[I]t's exceedingly rare to come across writing as seamless and engrossing as Charles Baxter's. Even when this wizard aims to exasperate you, as he does in his newest novel, his voice casts a dreamy spell of suspended animation." TRICIA SPRINGSTUBB

Denver Post ****

"It is impossible to stop wondering where reality fits in the story that unfolds, and the way Baxter resolves the question will work for some readers and not for others. ... Ultimately, it's hard to argue with a book filled with prose so toothsome it is tempting to read it aloud, just for the taste of the words, with a work that keeps you unflaggingly engaged and with one that makes you want to start re-reading once it is done." ROBIN VIDIMOS

Rocky Mountain News ***

"Baxter's ethereal writing and witty mockery of academic intelligentsia reinforce his decidedly creepy story of identity theft. This novel strongly recalls Patricia Highsmith's sordid tales about the sociopathic Tom Ripley." CLAYTON MOORE

Houston Chronicle ***

"The Soul Thief feels to me as if it could have worked more successfully as an extended short story. ... Baxter's poetic writing, his knowing eye, his gift of revealing truths in the quietest, most authentic details can't make up for the need for a richer fleshing-out of emotion and character." LISA JENNIFER SELZMAN

Los Angeles Times ***

"[I]t saddens me to report that the climax is a hackneyed bit of metafictional whimsy, which more or less sinks the novel. ... To create a work like this one, with its flaws and scattered sublimities alike--well, it takes a thief." JAMES MARCUS

CRITICAL SUMMARY

Charles Baxter's ability to play with his own identity consistently impresses reviewers. Author of the 2000 National Book Award finalist Feast of Love, he has proved adept as a novelist and short story writer, as well as an inventor of forms somewhere in between. The Soul Thief is one such example. It is almost short enough to be a novella, yet it spans 30 years. Its plot hinges on a short story kind of "twist," yet its characters are intriguing enough to have novels to themselves. Critics' reactions depended on how well they tolerated this inventiveness. Those who enjoyed it found The Soul Thief a compelling investigation into how identities are lost and found over a lifetime. Those who were less patient with Baxter's narrative devices were also intrigued by the theme of identity, but they left the novel feeling robbed of solid characters.

***

A Father's Law

By Richard Wright

The last chapter in a luminous career.

Richard Wright, whose powerful, groundbreaking novels brought to light the racial inequality and social injustice of pre--civil rights era America, began writing A Father's Law six weeks before his death in 1960. It has now been published to commemorate the centenary of Wright's birth. Rudolph "Ruddy" Turner, a black police captain in Chicago, is summoned to city hall in the middle of the night and appointed police chief of Brentwood Park, an affluent, mostly white suburb being terrorized by a serial killer. On the verge of retirement and looking forward to spending more time with his wife Agnes and his troubled son Tommy, a sociology student at the University of Chicago, Turner only reluctantly takes the position. In an attempt to draw his son out, Turner enlists his help in profiling the murderer. But it soon becomes clear to Ruddy that Tommy may, in fact, be the murderer.

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Harper Perennial. 268 pages. $14.95. ISBN: 006134916X

Chicago Tribune ****

"None of the novels Wright published after Native Son compares in depth of character, breadth of narrative and thematic impact to A Father's Law. ... Themes of crime and punishment, the nature of freedom, the nature of the law, of parental relations and the relation of citizen to community all are writ large in this compelling draft composed in a forward-moving style, with prose that's easy to engage and characters who are difficult to ignore." ALAN CHEUSE

Washington Post ****

"It is by no means a perfect novel, and it has gaps in its narrative like other unfinished works. But what the book lacks in polish and gloss, it makes up for in the strength and pull of its story, which is surprisingly contemporary for one written close to half a century ago." W. RALPH EUBANKS

Milwaukee Jrnl Sentinel ***

"The sense of incompleteness is part and parcel of the experience of reading A Father's Law, even up to the 'surprise' ending that suggests a rapid cobbling of storylines to tie things up in a neat bow. ... The result is not totally satisfying but a valuable addition to his legend nevertheless." EUGENE KANE

Seattle Times ***

"The detective-story-within-a-family-drama sometimes feels forced, the relationship between Ruddy and Tommy intriguing but not fully fleshed out. The age-old tension between fathers and sons is a deep well, and I suspect Wright would have explored the depths a little further had this master of psychological torment had more time to craft this last, promising, novel." TYRONE BEASON

Boston Globe **

"By 1960 Wright had spent over a decade in self-imposed exile, out of touch with the American idiom and American reality, a problem all too evident here. The language is stilted, and unlike Wright's classics of racial identity, this sketchy novel has virtually nothing to say about race, treating as literally unremarkable the appointment of a black police chief in the Jim Crow America that Wright himself had fled." AMANDA HELLER

Los Angeles Times **

"The novel was to be Wright's attempt at a 'psychological thriller,' Julia Wright explains in her introduction, but it's rough going, marked by stilted dialogue, high-pitched melodrama and a windy, convoluted narrative. It feels very much like a work-in-progress, something still circling around to find itself." LYNELL GEORGE

NY Times Book Review *