["Unholy Loves"] opens with a welcoming party, a scene of jealous, strained, fairly poisoned attentiveness, the characteristic swarming of small academics around a Great Name. In his 71st year, the British poet Albert St. Dennis has come to Woodslee College as Distinguished Professor of Poetry. (p. 9)

At once a flickering, erratic presence and a profound central absence, St. Dennis serves well as a ruthless exposer of those around him. His evasions madden and embolden the Woodslee faculty, his indifference calls forth their unholy loves.

Character delineations in this novel are often severely slanted, the satire heavy, scathing at times, for Joyce Carol Oates's touch is not delicate, and her vision of the world has never been a beneficent one. Bellum omnium, rather, a world of predators, a scene of doomed compulsion.

A powerful vision—and yet, for me, there are moments when it falters or begins to pall...