[Recurrent Melody (Passacaille)] has precisely the qualities of solemnity, of circular advance towards and withdrawal from a dark centre, of a stately and ominous dance, suggested by that musical term. Out of obsessive and sinister images, a marsh, a scarecrow, red rags of blood, hints of sorcery, a clock with its hands removed, the author struggles, it seems, to build a narrative which will hang together. Towards the end, assisted by some brief touches of gloomy humour, he almost succeeds; and the narrative then collapses once more into funeral shreds. Little enough to engage one's interest, one might think. But torn from any context, arranged in shifting patterns, linked explicitly in different and contradictory ways with one another, the novel's malignant images attract the full weight of our attention: they exercise, in fact, considerable poetic power. (pp. 104-05)

Graham Martin, in London Magazine (© London Magazine 1976), June-July, 1976.