SOURCE: A review of Punishments, in Contemporary Review, July, 1989, p. 45.

In the following review of Punishments, Abel briefly describes what she feels are the two “punishments” found in the novel.

Punishments by Francis King is a subtle, thoughtfully planned novel in which a strong under-stated theme underlies the plot. A young medical student, Michael, recounts his experiences during a journey to Germany almost immediately after the second world war, in the company of a number of other English university students. They are to stay in the homes of German undergraduates. Theirs is a voyage of reconciliation and Michael later calls it a journey ‘into a knowledge of others—and, more important, into a knowledge of myself’. His narrative is set between two brief passages dated 1981, although the experiences which he describes, with hindsight, occurred in 1948.

The account of his falling reluctantly but unmistakeably in love with an attractive...