Pamela Hansford Johnson belongs, with R. C. Hutchinson and Romilly Cavan, to a new generation of respectably popular novelists who are just arriving, or have just arrived. In [Too Dear for My Possessing] she writes in the first person, as a boy and later as a man; a difficult feat of male impersonation which is strikingly successful and which must inevitably be labelled tour de force….

This is a full-fathoms-five novel to drown in, ample in dimension, leisurely and detailed in development, packed with carefully elaborated characterisation and incident. The recollections of a boyhood in Bruges have an individual atmosphere and a sharpness of vision which carry full conviction, and it is in describing these early years that Miss Johnson is most satisfying to read. But there is a disturbing undercurrent, even in the best of the opening chapters: a portentousness of address and a further vagueness beyond...