SOURCE: "Freeing the Slaves," in The New York Times Book Review, May 26, 1996, p. 11.

In the following review, Dyer cites shortcomings in The Last of the Savages. According to Dyer, "We are left with the statement of great purpose rather than its achieved substance and form."

As the allusive title suggests, The Last of the Savages addresses itself to big themes. Grappling with "the past's implacable claims on the present," it is a novel about—as a character accents it with some incredulity—history. It is also, tacitly, a novel about the confrontation with a frontier: a demonstration of a writer coming up against his limitations. In the end it is less the work itself that compels admiration than the author's willingness to extend himself beyond his undoubted strengths.

Jay McInerney has always been most at home within narrow alleys of narrative: a few blitzed-out days in Bright Lights...