Up to now John Knowles has been something of a miniaturist, his novels and stories set in close quarters: the boarding school of "A Separate Peace," the Yale campus of "The Paragon." At their best these short, intense novels are quite fine; in particular, Knowles has displayed a sensitive and unsentimental appreciation of the real and imagined agonies of young men as they go through the rites of passage.

But "A Vein of Riches" is something else again…. It pains me greatly to say so, but the novel does not possess a single redeeming virtue. Its characters and situations are clichés. Its irony is hamhanded. It is utterly lacking in subtlety, grace or wit. It is talky, obvious and boring….

It's an old story, and all Knowles's ingredients are old: the domineering, insensitive, sexually frustrated father; the dreamy, wispy, yet unexpectedly resilient mother; the son [Lyle] frustrated...