Woody Allen's first novel, What's With Baum?, has arrived with the 89-year-old film-maker's trademark humour and neuroses, but critics note a familiar lack of self-reflection on the controversies surrounding his personal life. The novel centres on Asher Baum, a bespectacled Jewish hypochondriac with two ex-wives, a Connecticut home and a Manhattan pied-à-terre, whose career is threatened after a misjudged encounter with a young female journalist.
According to reviews, the story initially appears to engage with the #MeToo movement: Baum, a novelist, faces a takedown from an interviewer he kissed inappropriately. However, the narrative shies away from the storm, with the journalist never appearing in person and the plot descending into farcical silliness. Critics describe the experience of reading as 'eerie' and 'unearthly', noting that Allen's style remains unchanged, producing 'very good gags' but no surprises.
The novel's most vivid sections involve Baum's rivalry with his stepson, Thane, a literary sensation whose debut novel The Bevelled Heart outshines Baum's own floundering career. The father figure, consumed with envy, becomes a modern Salieri to the young Mozart. Reviewers find these passages the most alive, though the overall work is judged more fluent than Allen's recent films, if ultimately unresolved.
Allen, who has faced allegations of sexual assault from his adopted daughter Dylan Farrow, does not address these allegations in the novel. Critics suggest the book teases a confessional or cultural war exploration but retreats. The Guardian's review comments that reading What's With Baum? is like visiting a 'secret Narnia' of 1970s New York, a world of Neil Simon plays and Burt Bacharach LPs, where Allen's mannerisms and themes remain frozen in time.
