[2] A controversial work at the time of its publication—due in part to its homosexual and incestuous subject matter—"Pages from Cold Point" was not included, nor his "The Delicate Prey", in the British collection A Little Stone published by John Lehmann in 1950.
[3][4] "Pages from Cold Point" figures among the works of gay fiction that emerged in American literature in the post-World War II period.
[5] Norton, an American University professor, has taken an early retirement on an unidentified Caribbean island off the coast of Cuba following the death of his wife; her financial legacy allows him to do so comfortably.
Despite the strenuous objections of his elder brother, Charles, Norton removes his 16-year-old son Racky from school to serve as his companion.
They share a rental property at the remote Cold Point, a tropical paradise whose amenities include a number of native house servants, a cook, and a groundskeeper, Peter.
Literary critic Oliver Evans (critic) writes: "The least successful [of Bowles's stories] in which the horror constitutes an end in itself, [is] 'Pages from Cold Point', a study of homosexual incest, a brilliant tour de force written in Bowles's very best manner but without any apparent root in the author's fundamental convictions: in this respect, as also in the cumulative horror of its situation and its technical perfection, it reminds us of The Turn of the Screw.