“Feast Day of the Cannibals is the first of [Lock’s American Novels] to explore the lives of 19^th-century men who felt a sexual attraction to each other. . . . [His] recreation of a past time and place is impressive, but his signal achievement in this novel is the voice of its narrator, Shelby Ross. . . . Lock does not merely imitate 19^th-century prose; he makes it his own, with verbal flourishes worthy of Melville.”