The technique in I am the Cheese … is an exacting one, and to follow the tripartite narrative readers will have to be alert as well as concerned if they are to realise its full value. There is no mitigation of the terror or the peril of Adam Farmer, a boy of fourteen whose privacy is invaded and whose mind is almost destroyed by the secret, unassailable agencies of government…. Through hints, half-truths, the brutal insistence of Brint the questioner and the pathetic delusion of the boy, the author presents his case for the liberty of the individual, his case against the menace of institutional power. As the title suggests, Adam has lost his family (the "Farmer in the Dell" and the farmer's wife) and, like the cheese, he stands alone. He does still stand—so much we guess from the enigmatic end of the book; but his prospects are bleak, unspoken and undefined, and the tone of the book is tragic. Literary technique can sometimes destroy the candour of a book or mask its structure. In [I am the Cheese], more consistently balanced for young readers than The Chocolate War, technique has added something positive and integral to the whole. (p. 3286)
Margery Fisher, in her Growing Point, April, 1978.
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