In many of his earlier novels James Baldwin showed that he … was a distinguished craftsman. But in Just Above My Head, though he reverts to the fruitful matter of his first novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, the phenomenon of American black evangelical Christianity, he has lost the touch he showed there and in Giovanni's Room….

[The] plot, if there is one, has no focus.

The book is artless—by which I mean without craft. The stories of Julia and Hall are interesting; that of Arthur might have become interesting. But Baldwin neither brings them together, nor develops them seriously. Worse, the novel wears its theme on its sleeve. It is quite openly trying to tell us that the sexual differences, distinctions and hang-ups of the late Sixties and the Seventies are as wrong and pointless as the racial ones that preceded the era of sexual concern. In other words the differences between gay and straight are no more important or interesting than those between white and black.

I am in total agreement with that sentiment, and did not even squirm too much while reading the pages of explicit lovemaking between Arthur and Crunch, his boyhood friend, Jimmy, the lover of his maturity, or Guy, the Frenchman he has in between them. The homosexual passages are disturbing in a way that the equally explicit heterosexual ones are not. But this is not because the reader is biased or squeamish, but because Baldwin has committed an artistic error. All these scenes are narrated in the first person by Hall, Arthur's elder brother. He is actually a participant in the straight scenes, so the reader does not mind a slight whiff of pornography in their description. But he also narrates the homosexual scenes…. In addition to unjustified narrative voyeurism, the novel also suffers from repetition, especially obsessive harking upon such topics as body odours. Final verdict: more fart than art. (p. 14)