SOURCE: “Warts and All,” in The Times Literary Supplement, No. 4470, December 2-8, 1988, p. 1350.

In the following mixed review of Three Uneasy Pieces, Enright contends that while there are “brilliant passages” throughout the collection, the “book's chief uneasiness lies in the reader's fear of having missed the point.”

On the first leaf of this slim triptych Patrick White suggests that we do indeed grow wiser with age, just as long as we disbelieve the myth about growing wiser with age. Sterility and decay are the primary themes here; and guilt: even vegans must feel guilty as they hear “the whimper of a frivolous lettuce, the hoarse-voiced protest of slivered parsnip”.

In the third and most substantial story, “The Age of a Wart”, the narrator, born into a wealthy Sydney family and now a famous writer, “a stuffed turkey at banquets”, broods on his vanity and false ambition. He compares...