Nadler’s writing flows so effortlessly that you almost miss the immense density and complexity of his debut book, The Book of Life. He writes with the pen of a master, but with the genuine passion of a novice ... Amidst the ruins, Nadler finds traces of redemption in the hazardous terrain of tattered relationships. Nadler provides no easy answers as to how to navigate this land ... But in the world Nadler creates, the attempts, the subtle gestures, the weight of the unspoken, their comic absurdities, bring out the deep humanity of the characters ... Here, setting, written in beautiful prose, serves not only to ground the reader in the immediate now, but acts as its own character, as valium, as a status symbol, and as reservoirs of memory ... Nadler emerges as an exquisite writer of ellipses.
One thing becomes readily clear about Stuart Nadler, whose graceful, keenly perceptive debut collection offers narratives of young love, middle-class infidelity, families in mourning, and fathers connecting clumsily with sons: this guy has read his Cheever ... 'Winter on the Sawtooth' is an especially stunning and generous piece of work—a portrait of a father struggling to overcome a betrayal by his wife and an estrangement from his son ... Nadler’s work celebrates the complexity hidden in ordinary-seeming lives
His debut collection of short stories is undeniably accomplished and sometimes moving, but their quality is uneven and there is a repetitiveness of subject matter that detracts from, rather than enhances, their resonant power ... There are echoes of the motifs that have concerned Roth and Updike over their long careers ... Nadler proves himself adept at creating tension through oblique dialogue, and the lack of communication between characters is a theme that runs throughout the book ... He doesn't seem sure how to end a narrative ... When Nadler gives the reader a reason to feel optimism, his writing seems to shine, as if that's where his own feelings really lie. The more downbeat stories are less convincing.
...whether we are untrustworthy, distrustful or trusting, Nadler reminds us that there is always a connection, no matter how thin or how fraught, that threads people’s lives together ... Nadler also places emphasis on each man’s connection to Judaism, which appears as an anchor in the midst of the chaos of their lives ... And yet despite these themes of faith and trust, none of the stories offer their characters a conclusion or provides a moral. Each story ends as if with ellipses ... Nadler shows that a book of life is not grandiose; it can be simply an amalgam of life’s banalities.
Nadler seems to know his characters inside-out and spins out their foibles and frailties in a leisurely fashion ... 'Beyond Any Blessing,' the final story in the collection, and one of the best, introduces us to Daniel, whose parents died when he was seven and who was raised by his elderly grandfather, a rabbi. Now, at the age of 90, his grandfather has been let go due to infidelity, and Daniel tries both to help him and to come to terms with his own restless and unintelligible life ... Nadler is a writer’s writer, a fine observer of the nuances and idiosyncrasies of character.
