SOURCE: "After Slavery," in Times Literary Supplement, No. 4496, June 2-8, 1989, p. 619.

In the following review, Lively complains that the theme of oppression in Higher Ground "sticks out too much."

One of the most damaging ways in which to draw and quarter a novel is by plucking out "themes". And conversely, one of the most dangerous traps that a writer can dig and jump into is to take an overly conceptual approach, imposing an idea on the imagination rather than letting it breed there. Something like this may have been the case with Caryl Phillips's Higher Ground. He describes it—in what sounds more like an apology than a subtitle—as "a novel in three parts", and in a sense the problem with the book is not that the parts lack connection, but that the connection is too transparent. The "theme" sticks out too much.

This theme is the...