Robert Stone Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Granville Hicks

Critical Essay by Granville Hicks

[A] first novel about which I am most enthusiastic is Robert Stone's A Hall of Mirrors, which would be notable in any season and whether it was the author's first or his tenth….

Stone has written about a number of persons who are badly adjusted to the society in which they find themselves. (p. 24)

[He] writes out of strong feeling, and his style communicates his passion. As I have often remarked, our most talented novelists are likely to be concerned with misfits. Few of them have made misfits more understandable or more significant than these characters of Stone's…. A Hall of Mirrors is exciting in a way that even promising first novels rarely are. (p. 25)

Granville Hicks, "Nine Bright Beginnings," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1967 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. L, No. 33, August 19, 1967, pp. 23-5.∗