In many of his earlier novels James Baldwin showed that he … was a distinguished craftsman. But in Just Above My Head, though he reverts to the fruitful matter of his first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, the phenomenon of American black evangelical Christianity, he has lost the touch he showed there and in Giovanni's Room….

[The] plot, if there is one, has no focus.

The book is artless—by which I mean without craft. The stories of Julia and Hall are interesting; that of Arthur might have become interesting. But Baldwin neither brings them together, nor develops them seriously. Worse, the novel wears its theme on its sleeve. It is quite openly trying to tell us that the sexual differences, distinctions and hang-ups of the late Sixties and the Seventies are as wrong and pointless as the racial ones that preceded the era of sexual concern...