Anthony West's novels exhibit two distinct traits. The first reflects his desire to make the novels large enough in compass to treat completely and imaginatively the fundamental problems of human behavior as they have been highlighted by the pressures of war. In his first two novels particular human dilemmas are given fantasy settings to emphasize their significance. The second trait, reflected in his remaining works, is the restriction of the novel to a smaller scale, using the novel as a means of portraying domestic issues and circumstances that delineate the splendors and miseries of growing up, and of coming to terms with adults, with material success, and with sex. His employment of these two different methods points up the contrast, in the postwar period, between the metaphorical novel, best exemplified by William Golding's Lord of the Flies, and the novel of social criticism or satire, such as Kingsley...