The novel's pleasures... mostly reside in its formal arrangement and Bail's brilliantly distilled, and witty prose

A curious and intriguing novel... the brilliant skill of the writing makes the world come alive on the page

A nicely written, wonderfully entertaining novel... Philosophy is a big, difficult subject - there is none bigger - that Bail depicts thoughtfully and with sympathetic humour

Quietly fascinating... Bail's prose is as full of space and glaring, almost painful light as the landscape... This book is as hard and sparse as that landscape, but no less beautiful for that

Bail's highly idiosyncratic style resembles a choppy sea in which phrases and images constantly jostle each other to send up a dazzlingly brilliant spray. In addition, his ability to conjure up a character in a paragraph or even a mere sentence is remarkable

The novel makes no pretence of providing unambiguous answers, but takes us on a beguiling, questing journey

Murray Bail marshals the tensions between his characters and their ideas to great effect

A gratifyingly dry wit pervades this novel of ideas

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour