Adulteries in John Cheever's world are conducted, usually, with politeness and grace; in the stories of Frederic Raphael they are defined by a need in the participants altogether more brittle and grasping. The terms of the erotic arrangement are precise and precarious; not delicacy of spirit but deviousness may be responsible for this. Several of the stories [in Sleeps Six and Other Stories] are nothing but fragments, compressed to the point of insubstantiality. An ability to observe closely, with humour, hasn't saved the author from many lapses into smartness ('pregnant silences were followed by infantile noises'), and aphoristic gloss. As vignettes of modern life in a high-income zone these stories are occasionally impressive (the title story, for instance, begins to develop a kind of inner coherence), but one is left with a feeling of talents underused.

Patricia Craig, "Frederic Raphael's 'Sleeps Six and Other Stories'" (© copyright Patricia Craig...