SOURCE: “Sparks from a Burning Wheel,” in The Times Literary Supplement, October 22, 1964, p. 953.

In this review of The Burnt Ones, the critic provides a negative assessment of the short fiction collection.

In Mr. White's more recent novels a centrifugal tendency has been increasingly apparent: things do not fall apart—Mr. White has too much control to permit that—but they do tug apart. In Voss the centre holds only by a dream communion between Voss and Laura Trevelyan which intensifies and tightens as the physical distance between them increases. In Riders in the Chariot even Mr. White's technical ingenuity is hard put to it to keep the reins of his quadriga; and the real unity of the novel depends less on its structure than on the burning vision which informs it. Now, in this collection of stories, sparks from his anvil rather than chips from the axe which...