"This is a fascinatingly extraordinary book which combines the force of Decline and Fall, the Gothic enormities of the Powys brothers, and conveys them with that innate compassion for adolescence that marked Iris Murdoch"s The Bell." - Angus Wilson "I admire Lord Dismiss Us as a brilliant work of art and I enjoyed it so much that I hated to finish it." - Christopher Isherwood "Marvellous. I read it very slowly because I was enjoying it so much. I think it achieves a sort of tragic beauty and it is really about love, which all novels profess to be about, but hardly any are." - Iris Murdoch "A remarkable evocation of the process of growing up and the ghastly but somehow paradisal closed world of school. I admire particularly the extreme economy of the writing and the way in which the characters are limned chiefly by what they say-the true way of fiction, the dramatic way.... [A] very good novel indeed." - Anthony Burgess "[T]he humorous is nicely...