Although he lacks the emotional intensity of [Alan] Garner, Mayne does have a sense of story; and despite his willfully oblique manner of style and method, he can convey the significance of events in such books as Earthfasts, Ravensgill, and A Game of Dark…. But although he displays in The Jersey Shore his flair for catching colloquial characteristics of speech and idiosyncrasies of character, he suggests a situation without developing it and tells a mere wisp of a story….

Until the epilogue, the narrative is singularly tepid and lacking in the kind of motivation that makes for storytelling. And there is little suspense, though much covert humor, in the detailing of casual events of everyday life. The setting only hazily hints at the New Jersey shore. What is remarkable about the book, however, is its ending—or rather its two endings, that of the original English edition and...