SOURCE: A review of Ash on an Old Man's Sleeve, in Times Literary Supplement, March 29, 1996, p. 22.

In the following review of Ash on an Old Man's Sleeve, Godfrey-Faussett objects to the novel's “confessional style” and to its forced imagery.

With [Ash on an Old Man's Sleeve] Francis King juggles the epithets in the aphorism attributed to William Lecky that “sensuality is the vice of young men and old nations.” The “ash” of the title doesn't only get on the narrator's sleeve but also up his nose, as a brief encounter with cocaine launches his Cuban holiday in a way he never expected. He writes: “my head, so far from resembling some sealed, over-crowded storeroom, was now a vast, open arena, full of light and air.” When he reports a failed bag-snatch by a small boy, he meets Eneas, a handsome young police officer. The book is a recollected...