Dan's experiences [in Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve] are those commonly attributed to that fabled animal, the average boy. He has a schoolmate, Keith, with whom he is alternately friend and enemy; he comes to know the meaning of death through that of Keith's mother and his own pet frog; he learns of family strife and grievances, of the existence of girls, of the large outside world, of Berente, Spain and Dachau. The incidents, presented to us in a roughly chronological order, are related only because they happen to a single person. In E. M. Forster's terms, we have here a story but no plot.

As the events are unfolded we say "and then—and then?" But there is no causal relation between them; we do not ask "why?" The merit of the novel rests, thus, upon the incremental value of the separate incidents, and these, while interesting enough to read about, are seldom affecting or impressive enough to remember. Those that linger are usually the comic or the outrageous….

A constant irritant throughout the book is a confusion attendant upon the identity of the narrator. Is it the child Dan, a mature reflective Dan, or the author?…

There is an odd "poetical" quality about much of the writing that enables it to be distinctive without being distinguished. It reads like a pale imitation of Dylan Thomas, or as if the author had waged a losing struggle to find in English the equivalent for a foreign idiom. When Mr. Abse resorts to relatively direct statement, he does much better. There is an excellent description of the ennui and directionless activity that fill the Sunday of many people, and an equally good passage in which Dan penetrates to the mystery of existence and holds it in his hands for an entire afternoon. These pages are so good that one wishes the other pages were on the same level, that the entire novel measured up to them. But they don't, and it doesn't.