[Dirk Bogarde's first novel, A Gentle Occupation], is not nearly so well crafted as his two autobiographical volumes, but it is certainly a very good start in the genre…. [A] young British officer … finds himself in the midst of a nationalist guerrilla war on the one hand and a nest of colonialist vipers on the other. It is potentially a good yarn, and Bogarde writes awfully clever dialogue; but in the end the story falls of its own weight. It is simply too ponderous, the characters too wooden to hold our attention.

"Notes on Current Books: 'A Gentle Occupation'," in The Virginia Quarterly Review (copyright, 1980, by The Virginia Quarterly Review, The University of Virginia), Vol. 56, No. 4 (Autumn, 1980), p. 140.