SOURCE: “Criminal Connections,” in Times Literary Supplement, September 23, 1994, p. 22.

In the following review of The One and Only, Woods criticizes what he views as overwritten passages, but states that the story is “well told” and unique.

The past comes back to haunt you. It does in fiction, at least. One does not need a large-scale obsessive, like Proust, to demonstrate how heavily the structure of the novel itself has come to rely on this banal idea. Come-uppance is the key.

The narrator and protagonist of Francis King's [One and Only], Mervyn Frost, is sent the typescript of an old school friend's autobiography and finds, to his dismay, that an appalling episode in his own past—which led to his being institutionalized—is described there in full detail, with identities barely disguised. Bob, the friend, will not edit these revelations from his book until a certain price has been...