Though Cheever can still turn a phrase with the best of them, Oh What … is by any and every standard a bad book, worthy of notice only because he put his name to it. Clumsily lurching back and forth between postmodern and realistic techniques, it botches both. The plot resolves itself by a devil ex machina; the language is flabby ("nether" does not mean "nondescript"), the snobbishness painful. Better you should read the collected stories. Or, best, The Wapshot Chronicle, which is truer and more touching a quarter century after its publication than this book is now or ever will be.

Geoffrey Stokes, "Books: 'Oh What a Paradise It Seems'" (reprinted by permission of The Village Voice and the author; copyright © News Group Publications, Inc., 1982), in The Village Voice, Vol. XXVII, No. 11. March 16, 1982, p. 93.