SOURCE: Meyers, Jeffrey. “Suffering and Squalor.” National Review 38, no. 19 (10 October 1986): 57, 59.

In the following review, Meyers compares Children of Light to Kate Chopin's The Awakening but faults Stone's novel for lacking the “depth and power” of his earlier works such as Dog Soldiers.

Robert Stone is the master of desperate situations. His previous novels dealt with alcoholism in New Orleans, Vietnamese drugs in California, and revolution in Central America. All his books end in an apocalyptic bloodbath. “I want to deal with extremes of brutality,” Stone said in an interview, “[to show] that the innocent suffer at the hands of people or forces driven by ignorance and greed.”

Children of Light (the ironic title comes from Luke 16:8) concerns Gordon Walker—actor and screenwriter, alcohol and cocaine addict, predator and survivor. He has just been successfully acting King Lear, but sees “his life as trash—a soiled article, past repair...