British poet Michael Mott showed considerable ability in his first novel, "The Notebooks of Susan Berry."… "Helmet and Wasps," his second novel, is a book of greater distinction. This time, he has integrated his poetic gifts with a fine command of the novelist's technical skills, to create a serious study in which a complex central character is remolded with extraordinary precision….

Mott's novel, reaching its climaxes with the quiet power and slow measured pace of an Antonioni movie, transmutes by no means original subject matter into first-class fiction through sheer craftsmanship.