SOURCE: A review of An Evening Performance, in the New York Times Book Review, October 6, 1985, p. 28.

In the following review, Johnson provides a mixed assessment of An Evening Performance.

Though best known for his historical novels—Death of the Fox and The Succession—George Garrett has also produced a large body of short fiction encompassing the American experience of the last 30 years. The stories collected [in An Evening Performance] describe the conflicts of adolescence, romantic and domestic turmoil, life in small Southern towns, academic life and wartime experiences, and they range in manner from the naturalistic to the near-farcical. Never less than workmanlike, solidly traditional in form, Mr. Garrett's stories frequently sound the theme of human cruelty. "Human beings are the foulest things in all creation," says a character in "Wounded Soldier," while the boy-narrator of "The Last of the Spanish Blood" is made to confront his own...