[One has] the feeling that Malcolm X's life and death do not furnish the best vehicle by which even an immensely talented writer can express in cinematic terms the problems of race in America today. And finally one wonders if Baldwin himself was right to accept this particular job. In his recent prose works his evangelical fervour has been meshed with a marvellous, high style reminiscent of the masters of Rye, Sussex, and Oxford, Mississippi and seeming more natural to him than Harlem, Argot. The upshot, in [One Day, When I Was Lost] …, is the suggestion of a job of work energetically and demotically written and not altogether inspirited. Plenty of heart, if you like, but not enough soul. (p. 643)

Anthony Bailey, "Black and White," in New Statesman (© 1972 The Statesman & Nation Publishing Co. Ltd.), Vol. 84, No. 2172, November 3, 1972, pp. 643-44.