["Favours"] is a study of an elderly spinster who becomes addicted to the services of a paid lover. (p. 28)

Bernice Rubens has a firm, brisk style, but she shows a disquieting tendency to shift her viewpoint inappropriately….

It's significant, too, that Miss Hawkins remains "Miss Hawkins" throughout the book; she never becomes "Jean". Nothing that happens in "Favours" shows any unexpected side of her, or says anything new about loneliness or dependency. Miss Hawkins continues to be a kind of cartoon old maid—a thin, dim creature so stunted by a life without love that the reader can't love her either. (p. 29)

Anne Tyler, "Unlikely Heroines," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1979 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 6, 1979, pp. 13, 28-9.∗