" ... it takes a really first-rate author to make it works, and either it works or it fails utterly."

I think you're right there, and I think it's even more difficult to pull off in the contemporary novel - with the possible exception of those of the Cold Mountain ilk, in which points of view will alternate for entire sections. Barbara Kingsolver used this device to wonderful effect in Poisonwood Bible. But then, each of her sections is in the first person, which isn't quite what we were talking about ...