The prolonged education and futile-seeming military service young American men must pass through before beginning to call their lives their own are effectively dramatized in "P. S. Wilkinson."…

C.D.B. Bryan, who won the Harper Prize with this first novel, begins showing this frustrating, drawn-out ordeal in—appropriately—post-truce Korea, where Wilkinson is an exasperated intelligence officer….

Young Wilkinson turns and turns at the center of his problems. He does not know what he wants to do with his life; he cannot "communicate"; he is moving from idealism to cynicism without ever touching realism. His affairs with girls are unstable and subject to abrupt terminations by him; he is lonely….

[Much] of "P. S. Wilkinson" may … be autobiographical. That would be irrelevant were it not that the chief shortcoming of the novel is one that occurs so often in fiction which is closely autobiographical: the central character is out of focus, seen in uneven proportion and depth and somewhat faceless. Photographing oneself is difficult.

For example, Mr. Bryan's central character tells us that he is in despair, but he only seems exasperated; exasperation is a useful emotion only in comedy, not in serious fiction. Wilkinson is all caught up with himself, and so he doesn't really catch us. He achieves life only when the force of the episode is coming strongly from outside himself—when he is caught cheating, when he is beaten up, when he is trapped in the desert.

The author does convey the circumstances around the central character with frequent success. Korea is convincingly steeped in mud and ambiguity and unreality…. The girls in P. S. Wilkinson's life are successfully evoked, particularly Hilary, whose point-blank attack on him for clinging to "pretty pictures" instead of seeing life as it is provides one of the novel's most effective scenes.

In the end he resolves his doubts and confusions enough to ask her to marry him. We are presumably meant to feel that this is a very important step toward Wilkinson's self-realization. But the impression doesn't stick. He might have asked her, he might not have; he did. The novel's final effect is not of a personal dilemma resolved but a personal dilemma presented, and presented at great length. The fact remains that the dilemma, the search for honor and relevance in a thwarting world, is an important one facing young Americans today; "P. S. Wilkinson" conveys its frustrations in full.