The structure of [The Young in One Another's Arms] is untidy because it tracks erratically in pursuit of the disorganized lives of a large number of characters. It takes [the] orphans and exiles scarred by the callous brutality of a technological society a long time to realize that they might reconstitute themselves into a commune-type family unit. The "pigs" in the approved fashion of the 60's neatly help them to define the kind of society they do not want to belong to. Rule tries to hold the first half of the book together in a number of ways. Ruth recounts several childhood memories that are meant to illuminate matters but only confuse them in jerky, obtrusive transitions. What is missing from the book and what might have worked effectively are details of Ruth's relationship with her daughter. Rule gives us lots of evidence about the mistakes and contingent accidents that have littered Ruth's life. We are given a good grasp on how easily and unintentionally people victimize each other, how carelessly they have a disastrous agency in the lives of those they drift into alliance with. But about the daughter whose death shook Ruth most profoundly we learn virtually nothing. (p. 131)

[There] is in Rule a Forsterian tendency to formulate Ruth's wisdom into gnomic, thematic, portentous insights set out in italics for our better edification. The problem, however, is that Ruth seems to have grasped everything there is to learn about her situation when we are only half way through her story. The plot becomes more prominently complex and a number of the characters are sent into delaying arabesques while Ruth learns, through further losses, her lesson all over again. In the third quarter of the twentieth century we cannot be expected to sit still for magisterial assertions such as "only connect the passion and the prose" or "see life steady and see it whole." Jane Rule is more modest in her assessment of what is possible: "It's so hard to know what's right…. You do what you can, don't you? And you try to believe that you do. I tried to be responsible."… Emerging from strife-torn lives there is a young child to give us hope of renewal, but the tranquility achieved has little of the beaming confidence Forster could pour on Helen Schlegel's child rollicking in the hay.

Despite the carping footnote above there is a great deal to admire in this novel. Ruth's husband Hal and a black youth, Boy Wonder, are splendid portrayals. Mavis, newly aware of an ambiguity in her sexual feelings, grows steadily and impressively throughout the novel. In many details Rule conveys the way the careless arrangements of a large scale society can bruise the fragile young already maimed and disillusioned by the routine corruptions of a decaying democracy…. [These] people learn the skills of surviving and of loving and caring for others with all the vulnerability that that entails. We have to learn to live with loss and with the fact that our best intentions may hurt others. The genuine strength of Jane Rule's novel is that she can transmit the necessary pain involved in coming to terms with these discoveries and convince us of the courage required in facing up to our responsibilities to each other…. (p. 132)