SOURCE: "'So Much Like a Lost Boy,'" in The New York Times Book Review, September 12, 1993, p. 15.

In the following evaluation of A Tidewater Morning, Bausch praises the way in which the three stories compliment each other and together "make one ineffable glow, like facets of the same dark jewel. "

The three long stories that are collected in A Tidewater Morning appeared in Esquire magazine over the course of roughly a decade, beginning in 1978. In the order in which they now appear, as William Styron tells us in an introductory note, they "reflect the experiences of the author at the ages of 20, 10 and 13." This, would seem an odd juxtaposition, but curiously, when read in this sequence they appear quite linear in theme—and even, in a way, in chronology. It is as if Mr. Styron, by allowing the light of memory and imagination to play on certain crucial...