Mr. Hartley's curious new novel [Facial Justice] is a kind of religious science-fiction, part fantasy about the future and part satirical fable about the standardization and neutralization of men and women. Though it concerns an individual who rebels against a conformist regime, it is not at all like 1984; perhaps the easiest way to contrast the two books is to remark that whereas Orwell invented the Ten Minutes' Hate Mr. Hartley has invented the Five Minutes' Laughter programme. His book is a love-story about humanity, comic in spirit, not tragic, religious, not political; the regime it portrays is more pathetic than horrific, while the narration has the odd, contrived remoteness of a dream rather than the inevitability of a nightmare….

Facial Justice is dedicated to Hawthorne, who called his own psychological romances "allegories of the heart"; and some of Mr. Hartley's symbols—the veil worn by Jael after her...