Warren's use of a quiet and controlled autobiographical narrative technique seems to be a deliberate effort to avoid the contrived plots and histrionics of some of his earlier fiction, such as World Enough and Time (1950). The convention of the autobiographical novel is used with an appearance of artless mastery in A Place to Come To, and Warren's command of language has seldom been as sure in his fiction as in this novel.

The characterizations of A Place to Come To attain varying degrees of success. Jed Tewksbury, the narrator and protagonist, is a believable personality, whether as a youth escaping his Alabama origins or as a successful academic. Unlike some of his predecessors in Warren's fiction, he is neither excessively idealistic nor annoyingly wiseacre in his narrative style.

Nearly all the other characters are secondary to Tewksbury, and some of them are treated very sketchily. Tewksbury's...