"Boyd has an exceptional ability to tell a really compelling story, in dense imaginative detail, about characters with complex, and convincing, emotional lives. . . . I've already read this book twice and probably shall again. Of how many novels can that be said?"--Peter Green, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"The sort of rare novel that redeems the essential purpose of prose fiction. . . . A high celebration of the plain fun of a life lived with relentless appetite and reasonable grace."--The Baltimore Sun

"Entertaining and moving. . . . Can be read with sheer pleasure not only for the delicacy of its emotions but for the truth of its perceptions. Like saying goodbye to a good friend, it's hard to see this brilliant novel come to an end." --The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

"A wonderful character--and a wonderful book. . . . Boyd persuades you that you've read the confidences of a real, flawed, marginal character battered by every malice and caprice of 20th-century history. " --The Seattle Times

"A pleasure front to back, and a fond tip of the bowler hat to the upper-class fiction spawned by a long-gone world."-- Newsweek

"One of the most skillful and appealing writers at work today."--The Atlantic Monthly

"A novel of deep humanity and insight."--Newsday