Ozick's first novel in more than 15 years [The Cannibal Galaxy] displays a complex, elegant style and deep sensitivity to the eternal difficulties of the human condition. Her story of a school principal who becomes aware of the pinched nature of his life through the unexpected blossoming of a student he had considered dull manages to combine brilliantly detailed individual character portraits with a more general philosophical consideration of the unpredictability of life. Ozick's technique is elliptical. She builds characters and delineates ideas bit by bit, dropping each additional mosaic … into place in her larger design with deceptively casual aplomb. Characteristically permeated by Jewish thought and folklore, her novel is universal in its warning against "stopping too soon"—fencing ourselves and others in by timidity and shortsightedness.

A review of "The Cannibal Galaxy," in Publishers Weekly (reprinted from the July 8, 1983 issue of Publishers Weekly, published by R. R. Bowker...