To readers of Miss Settle's earlier books, there should be much fascination in following [the] trail of violence [in "Fight Night on a Sweet Saturday"]…. One must regretfully add that, as a novel in its own right, "Fight Night" does not hold up. The writing is largely attractive. But Hannah's quest for meaning simply retreads too many well-trod paths of the Southern novel. The reader soon recognizes each new character, not as a human being, but as an expectable convention of that genre.
Possibly by now we have read enough about the problems of people hungering after a past "forever gone, forever yearned for, where life was ordered in dignity, and days were lovely, and there was no change." The meaning of Johnny's death never does emerge, largely because Johnny has never been made to live—save as the stock-figure of the delightful gentleman-wastrel. Edmund Fuller, reviewing the author's first book, "The Love Eaters" [see excerpt above] said that "a substantial writing talent is latent here…. Unhappily, it simply does not cohere as a work of art." The same words will do for this, her fifth.
Anthony Boucher, "Heirs of the Trail-Breakers," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1964 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 24, 1964, p. 39.
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Read the rest of this Criticism with our Settle, Mary Lee 1918–: Critical Essay by Anthony Boucher Access Pass.
