Now that at least [Loving, Living, and Party Going by] Henry Green, most neglected of twentieth-century novelists, have been reissued (along with Blindness, his first novel …) after more than twenty years of out-of-print oblivion, any unfavorable criticism may seem like a badly timed kick in the face to an author who is just—posthumously—getting back on his feet. Still, though these four Green novels deserve to be welcomed back with praise, that praise should be qualified; writers are, after all, neglected for reasons.

For me, at least, Loving/Living/Party Going do not present Henry Green at his most accomplished. For that, one would have to pick up Caught…. With its weirdly incandescent setting in pre-Blitz London, its atmosphere of desperate sexuality, its awkwardly rounded-out characters and extremely peculiar construction that shifts almost imperceptibly from story to prose poem to slice-of-life dialogue to interior monologue, Caught may...