The Chateau

Not just a book of the year but now one of my desert island books.

Adrian Turpin, Herald Scotland

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

The Oldie

His gentle urbanity is a joy

Sunday Telegraph

It's hard not to see it as a work of genius

Times Literary Supplement

As the voices of Austen, Turgenev and Tolstoy have survived, so will Maxwell's. There aren't many truly great writers among us. William Maxwell is one of them

The Times

He combines educated intelligent and instinctive apprehension of human complexity in a way that would have earned Henry James' approval. William Maxwell is the very model of what a novelist should be

Independent on Sunday

Reading 'The Chateau' is like meeting a very old friend with whom the conversation is always spontaneous, intimate, restorative and unpredictable... Maxwell is that rare thing, a kind writer... But what has made him so influential is his habit of interspersing his subtle accounts of character with sharp observations about human nature.

Independent

The novel successfully depicts misunderstandings, isolation and disappointment: are they sensitive to local traditions? Are they laughing at the right jokes? Are they tipping too much?

Guardian

Delicious and dead-on... All the embarrassments and gratifications of European travel are preserved in the amber of Maxwell's much pondered, seemingly casual prose.

New Yorker

Perennially endearing

Spectator

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

Daily Telegraph