Of the three books in this unofficial "aging Jewish male writer stumbles into an unusual romance" trilogy, this one had the most plot complications, and therefore was the most engrossing, but also the most predictable. It's your typical "Sad old man suffers enormous failure, flees to his hometown, tries to recapture youth, or any sort of feeling for that matter, by stealing his nephew's girlfriend, fails miserably" plot. (Is that common? I don't know, it felt common to me.) I'm up and down about a lot of the elements in this book—I liked the depiction of 1960s New York City; I was a bit bored with the sad old writer routine; his prose poetic style didn't step over itself except for a couple glaringly obnoxious places; I liked how he wrote twentysomethings, though I liked the girlfriend who was far too adept with wearing teasing masques of confidence more and thought the temperamental poet boyfriend a caricature. Yet it hung together. If the other two books were probably great books held back by some unraveling thread, this was a somewhat bland one that had undeniably solid stitching. Did you know Alfred Hayes wrote "Joe Hill"? I didn't know where to put that so I thought I would put that here. Three stars.