Saul Bellow's second novel is still very much an apprenticeship. But Bellow's familiar themes are present, the confusion of urban America, the personal knots that bind his principal characters and the slow, hard working out of our predicaments and mistakes. There are also moments of pure brilliance, as great as his major work. Leventhal is waiting for a subway train in New York with his brother, 'They felt the concussion of the train, and the streaked face of the lead car with its beam shot towards them in a smoulder of dust; the windows ran by.'