It is almost impertinent to say that the 30-year-old author of this first novel has talent, and it is impertinent to try and relate his gifts to his age or publishing history. Stone, at this moment, is a remarkable writer.

"A Hall of Mirrors" is, one could say, "The Day of the Locust" as told to Malcolm Lowry and edited by Frantz Fanon, the shade of the young Dos Passos benignly gazing on the while. And with such namedropping I mean less to imply influences—which in any case are of interest chiefly to academics and biographers—than to indicate what league Stone is playing in. His voice and his world are his own. Lowry comes to mind because "A Hall of Mirrors" has the most compelling surface, the densest network of detail, of any book I have read since "Under the Volcano," and it probes the soul...