With its focus on the relationships among the citizens of one small town, Point of No Return evokes both Jane Austen and Sinclair Lewis. The crucialpoint frame, however, embodies Marquand's stronger stress on the world of work. This balance places Marquand's novels among a number of American postwar novels (Sloan Wilson's The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, 1944, for example) whose protagonists must adjust to the triviality of their jobs in the civilian world. At the same time, the rich girl/ambitious boy plot makes this novel Marquand's strongest evocation of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

In addition to revealing debts to Tennyson and Homer, Melville Goodwin, USA also is the most Thackerayan of Marquand's novels. The Siren charac ter, Dottie Peale, has much in common with Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair, 18471848), including ruthlessness, sexuality, and ambition. Both Marquand and Thackeray include little actual combat in novels that nevertheless...