For in this quiet novel (Mother’s Boy) — and Gale’s fiction grows quieter and quieter, so even a bomb blast is muffled—Gale refuses to judge his characters. I sense that this is from a genuine generosity of spirit, a desire to allow the characters time to develop on their own. Quietly we learn that to become a mother’s boy requires the cooperation of both the mother and the boy, and it may lead, as in the case of Charles Causley, to some of the finest poems of his generation.