SOURCE: “The Alienated World of the Mutilated Men,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 19, 1982, p. 11.

In the following review, Hilton offers qualified praise for A Cry to Heaven.

Guido Maffeo was castrated when he was 6 years old. Born the 11th child in a peasant family, where hunger and cruelty were routine, the boy was taken gently, petted and fed; even the knife was not used unkindly. Although the memory of the surgery never left him, he had exchanged what he would not experience for a profession that afforded him a passion some men might envy.

Tonio Treschi was not so fortunate with his memories. At 15 he had already tasted the joys of sex; he had a strong sense of manhood, pride and heritage. The knife was applied violently, a shocking act of brutality and misplaced revenge. The mutilation stripped him of his family, of his position in...