Guardian, Nov 1, 1979. p.12

‘Deceit and Understanding’, Norman Shrapnel

‘Just Above My Head is a long lamentation in which the narrator sounds out his grief like a peal of bells – hammering it out relentlessly…until we are deafened or benumbed…Baldwin can be thunderously lyrical in a story which is an avowed attempt “to face both love and death”; and if there also signs of flagging this is almost to be welcomed for fear that such all-consuming vitality might otherwise end in consuming itself’.