Irwin Shaw confronts the … problems of wealth and freedom, in a novel which represents a welcome return to form after the blustering machismo of The Top of the Hill. Bread Upon the Waters offers both a richly realised account of life in contemporary New York, and a real sense of engagement with moral theme. Allen Strand, its hero, is a middle-aged history teacher whose strenuous work in a tough urban secondary school is relieved by an idyllically happy home life. One evening, as the family sits down to dinner, his youngest daughter brings in a bleeding man whom she has rescued from muggers in Central Park.

In the best fairytale manner, the battered stranger proves to be an immensely rich and powerful lawyer, who proceeds to lavish the ambiguous benefits of his fairy gold upon the docile Strands. So traditional a motif tempts one to expect cliché. Money...