SOURCE: “Writer and Reader,” in Southerly, Vol. 25, No. 1, 1965, pp. 69-71.

In the following review, Heseltine asserts that The Burnt Ones is “an essentially uneven book,” but that through the unevenness “shines one of our great creative spirits.”

“Dead Roses”, the story which Patrick White has placed at the beginning of The Burnt Ones, is long, previously unpublished, and resumes the chief features of the ten which follow it. It is largely concerned, for instance, with the influence on Anthea Scudamore of her dreadful, domineering mother. It is a theme which has already engaged Patrick White in his novels; but he has imagined no more hatefully satirical version of it than those scenes in “Dead Roses” where poor Anthea has to make long-distance telephone conversations to Mummy in the delighted presence of some holidaying friends. Yet it is not even in “Dead Roses” that White vents his hatred of...