Tom Hopkinson, ‘What the Lens Records’, Observer, October 6th, 1957, p. 14,

‘James Baldwin is an able writer in the current style of short sentences and simple words. The family background of his central figure is briefly and effectively sketched to provide a key to his situation, and his desperate relationship with Giovanni is movingly shown. The book makes indeed a tremendous effort to achieve tragedy through candour. It fails, not because its theme is less than tragic but because its hero is. He – that is, the “I” of Mr. Baldwin’s book – shows a paralysed sensitivity which permits him to suffer but not to act, and a burden of guilt which never allows him to stand outside the situation he describes’.