The two sons and one daughter of Axel Jordache, a small town-on-the-Hudson baker, form the triangle on which ["Rich Man, Poor Man"]—as on an armature—is unshakably constructed….

Tom starts out as a ne'er-do-well, Rudolph as the priggish mother's bright hope, and Gretchen as the renegade. A vast, shifting circle of acquaintances, friends, lovers, wives and husbands springs up around them. The directions they take and the goals they actually reach differ drastically.

A wealth of know-how has gone into the fictional creation; even today, few of our younger technicians can beat Irwin Shaw's expertise…. Shaw whisks us off from a standing start to a velocity well beyond familiar limits. His pace doesn't slacken for chapter after chapter. Incidents lead to incidents—and they are uncommonly appealing. You don't really catch your breath until … well, until you ask yourself what it's all about….

But in a novel...