SOURCE: "One Step Away From Fanaticism," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 19, 1993, pp. 3, 11.

Weaver is an American critic, translator, and travel writer who has written extensively on music and the theater. In the following review, he praises the economical style and engaging pace of No Other Life.

"Only one step separates fanaticism from barbarism." In his new and disturbing novel Brian Moore quotes this line of Diderot and later, to underline its importance, he repeats the quotation. In fact, the pensée does illuminate a large part of the story, but—as the story further reminds—there is also only one step between saintly devotion and destructive fanaticism; and No Other Life is concerned also with the ambiguities of the whole process. How does a bright boy on a backward island, rescued from the endemic grinding poverty, succeed in becoming first a brilliant priest, then a potent...