As in The Ginger Man, A Fairy Tale of New York is a picaresque novel and the characters are one-dimensional. Howard How and Mr. Mott, the owner of the spark plug company, are caricatures of the complacent, unimaginative man of business. The bigoted admiral who punches Christian in a boxing ring is a stereotypical example of the powerful, authoritarian individual. Vine is an allegorical portrayal of the successful man who believes in his own cliches. That he and How both give Christian repeated second chances are implausible attributes for the materialists Don leavy represents them as being, unless we stretch the satiric point that American business decisions are made on appearance only.

As in The Ginger Man, the women are stereotypes from a sexist male fantasy.

All of them live for the glorious consummation of sex with Christian.

An ex-girl friend, now well-to-do and a member of the...