Miss Howard, a talented and totally humorless writer, has produced a long and engrossing novel about lovers and love affairs. There is nothing in [After Julius] to disturb or distress anyone. It is the escape novel brought to a special, very feminine peak of perfection. Sex, suffering, and security are so closely entwined here that the novel seems to take on the shape of a great big heart—a perfect heart, warm and cozy inside, with lots of mirrors, and, outside, presenting an image that is enviable because it is both sophisticated and rosy. The book, in which coincidence sprouts as many arms as Shiva, is kept off the ground solely by the charm and will of its author, a remarkably seductive writer.

A review of "After Julius," in The New Yorker (© 1966 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. XLII, No. 8, April 16, 1966, p. 199.