SOURCE: A review of Judith and Other Stories, in Commonweal, Vol. XCIX, No. 19, February 15, 1974, pp. 493-94.

In this review, Phillips notes that although Farrell returns to the same themes and types of characters of his earlier works, one finds in this collection a mellower and warmer writer.

It astounds to learn that this is Farrell's forty-seventh published book. But perhaps it should be more astonishing to learn it is also his fourteenth short story collection. What other serious writer of fiction in America has published that many stories?

And while Farrell's stories often present many of the same themes and characters from his novels, there are examples when the shorter form is the more successful. He has a way of perceiving the hidden occasions of success or failure (more often of failure, in Farrell) which are the kernel of good short stories, and transmuting them through his own...