[Admission to the Feast presents stream] of consciousness meditations on her 19 year life and imminent death typed out in anguish by Annika Hallin after learning—accidentally—that she has leukemia. What begins as random expressions of disbelieving grief, opinions on the state of the world …, and remembered lines of poetry, soon coalesces into a memoir of her recently deceased alcoholic father. Rejecting the available bottle of sleeping pills, Annika soon begins to long in spite of herself for comfort from her boyfriend Jacob—whose intellectual dominance she'd only begun to resist. The final suggestion that Jacob may need her help (did he try to cross the thin ice of the lake on his way to her isolated cabin?) is somehow a less than satisfactory way of demonstrating her commitment to the days of life still ahead…. Annika is not profound enough to come to a real accommodation with death, but her gropings toward understanding and acceptance have a universal validity. Her reactions could be anyone's given the circumstances—there lie the story's limitations, and also its undeniable fascination.

A review of "Admission to the Feast," in Kirkus Reviews (copyright © 1972 The Kirkus Service, Inc.), Vol. XL, No. 18, September 15, 1972, p. 1106.