Despite the homely virtues with which their creator has endowed them, the characters in ["Rounds"] are often a little hard to take. Whether physicians, academics or undergraduates, they all talk too much and at unrelaxed levels of cleverness and cuteness. They leave little unsaid, no verbal shot unreturned.

The source of the problem is that Frederick Busch wants to display in realistic detail his characters in their daily rounds…. The author knows how certain things are done in the world, and is not content to leave his knowledge in the background. But as a novelist he also knows that conversation is not dialogue, that what two people say to each other in their daily rounds is generally short, inelegant and unmemorable. Here he must be unfaithful to the diurnal world, he must invent. Dialogue in a realistic novel is best saved for the moments of high drama.

There...