With the grimmest of subjects Cormier has written his most affirmative novel [The Bumblebee Flies Anyway]…. The book has some serious flaws, notably in the depiction of Cassie, who we are told is "vibrant and compelling," but who remains an abstraction. But this is a fine novel, even better on rereading, with a startling poetry in the simplest phrases. Young adults will be caught up in the terrifying thriller, the scientific facts about memory, the controversial issue of medical ethics. They will also be moved by the vision in the wasteland: Barney's power to define himself and reach out, through love and knowledge and arduous painful struggle.
Hazel Rochman, in a review of "The Bumblebee Flies Anyway," in School Library Journal, Vol. 30, No. 1, September, 1983, p. 132.
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