Mr Fortune's Maggot

At long last I pulled down from its place on the shelves Sylvia Townsend Warner's plump little novel impishly titled Mr. Fortune's Maggot and was once again amazed by what a witty, poetic, clairvoyant writer this English woman was

John Updike

Mr. Fortune's Maggot is satire at its best. There are passages here - particularly those delightfully malicious ones, of which there are many - that still cause the reader to laugh out loud. There is so much truth here

Anthony Slide

Sylvia Townsend Warner pursues the psychology of the story with beautiful accuracy

John Carey

Original, elegant and hypnotically strange

Miranda Seymour, The New York Times

Her writing is full of melodic skills... Her sentences move like talk between intimates. Perhaps that is why this quizzical tale is so intensely moving

Gillian Beer, New Statesman