'Extremely popular...her books sell and sell.'

A perfect escapist cocktail for summertime romantics.

So magically deft at being profound...possesses that daunting quality impossible to emulate: it makes greatness seem simple

Maxwell does something all great novelists do: he conjures depths of pain and regret in words of radiant simplicity

This calm, reflective and extraordinarily beautiful novel offers American fiction at its finest

Maxwell's voice is one of the wisest in American fiction; it is, as well, one of the kindest

Maxwell is one of the past half-century's unmistakably great novelists

Maxwell offers us scrupulously executed, moving landscapes of America's twentieth century, and they do not fade

Perennially endearing

Maxwell's achievement is to show how human relationships work in spite of the confines of history, language and nationality

Stylishly, subtly, the enjoyment of getting to know another country is conveyed with authority and a perceptions that's rare in our careless times

Lurie weaves a characteristically sharp-eyed, deftly ironic comedy of cultural collisions and collusions that rightly won her comparisons to Henry James and Edith Wharton

I am convinced that Alison Lurie's fiction will long outlast that of many currently more fashionable names. There is no American writer I have read with more constant pleasure and sympathy over the years. Foreign Affairs earns the same shelf as Henry James and Edith Wharton

A brilliant novel - her best I think. The book is a triumph, and not simply of style...Foreign Affairs is witty, acerbic, and sometimes fiendishly clever

Warm, clever and funny