The residents of a Jewish retirement home in Manhattan are staging Hamlet. That the cast are all senior citizens, and everybody is Jewish, guarantees Isler an array of ready made gags. However, narrator Otto Korner is not the standard elderly widower ready to joke about geriatric sex. Once a published poet, encouraged by Rilke, he has had a tragic past in wartime Europe. This is a familiar yet unusual, almost eccentric, debut, written in an often gracious, formal prose the slick, snappy dialogue does jar, as does much of the humour. At its most serious, it is self conscious at its more comic, heavy handedly crude. Though not deserving the high praise heaped on it Bellow he ain't it is good and at times quite moving.