The Village Voice
A New Life: A Novel by Bernard Malamud, Farrar, Straus, & Cudahy
By Arthur Sainer, New York City
November 2, 1961"'A New Life' has facets, brilliant aspects of S. Levin's odyssey through the academic country of the Northwest, but there is no central vision, nothing to embody and set off the cluster; without vision the facets must ultimately seem without meaning. They scatter on the ground like gems unstrung."
"He is the impoverished, 30-year-old Manhattan boy discovering himself naked, with umbrella, in the mountains..."