In the following review, Kauffman expresses disappointment with Body and Soul, stating that is "affords almost no pleasure, " and that Conroy fails to live up to his earlier promise.

In 1967, at the age of 31, Frank Conroy published Stop-Time. It was his first book, yet it was an autobiography - so prismatically conceived in sharp facets, so intense in its view of experience and of words themselves, that it marked the appearance of an arresting writer. Admirers (like myself) then kept watching down the road for the next Conroy book. It didn't arrive until 1985: Midair, a slim collection of eight stories, most of which supported prior opinions of his talent without much advancing his career.

Where was the novel that, intentionally or not, he had promised? In Stop-Time, speaking of his seventeenth birthday, he said:

It was around this time that I first thought of becoming a writer...