Hicks, Granville. “Sounds of Soul.” Saturday Review (17 August 1968): 19-20.

In the following review of Bloodline, Hicks praises the author's characterization and his ear for common speech while finding fault with some of the conclusions to the stories.

Ernest J. Gaines, author of two novels, Catherine Carmier and Of Love and Dust, has now published a collection of short stories, Bloodline. All five of the stories concern Negroes in the South—probably in Gaines's native Louisiana. In the first story, “A Long Day in November,” a five-year-old boy presents a domestic comedy that is no comedy to him. In “The Sky Is Gray” it is an eight-year-old who describes his journey to a nearby city to have a tooth pulled; the high point is the encounter between the boy's proud mother and a white woman whose tact matches her generosity. In “Three Men” a young roughneck tells what he...