Old Filth

Superb... quiet beauty, sly wit and heartbreaking humanity... the author has poignantly distilled a life less ordinary into 259 unforgettable pages * Sunday Times *
I was really moved by it and know that I will cry all over again when I re-read it * Lily King *
Beautiful, vivid and defiantly funny * The Times *
This novel is surely Gardam's masterpiece... On the human level, it is one of the most moving fictions I have read for years... This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style... her cunning wit, moving deftly between scenes and eras, displays the tragedy of a vintage world forever passing away * Guardian *
Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our very finest writers * Hilary Mantel *
It's a cliché to compare novelists to Jane Austen, but in the case of Jane Gardam it happens to be true. Her diamond-like prose, her understanding of the human heart, her formal inventiveness and her sense of what it is to be alive - young, old, lonely, in love - never fades * Amanda Craig *
Jane Gardam's work is rich and diverse and she writes beautifully... She's a treasure of contemporary English writing * Ian McEwan *
One of the finest writers around... Old Filth has stayed with me for years... Can't think of anyone who achieves so much with so few words * Sathnam Sanghera *
Her work, like Sylvia Townsend Warner's, has that appealing combination of elegance, erudition and flinty wit * Patrick Gale *
I recommend it wholeheartedly for its economy, breadth of narrative, and its insight, humour and pathos * Mail on Sunday *
The last great book I read * Rachel Weisz, Grazia *
I can't say I've read anything else like Old Filth, which stands out for me as a singular, opalescent novel, a thing of beauty that gives immense gratification to its lucky readers * Meg Wolitzer *
A magnificent, deeply moving and compassionate portrait of an era and a sentimental education * Daily Mail *
What a spiky brilliant sledgehammer of a novel is Jane Gardam's Old Filth * Patrick Ness *
Excellent and compulsively readable... Old Filth belongs in the Dickensian pantheon of memorable characters * New York Times *
Like Samuel Beckett, Gardam continually explores the corrosive loneliness of being alive and the courage it takes to continue... Readers will relish Old Filth for its compassionate wisdom, its comprehension of the way we lived then and live now, and for its absolute mastery of authorial tone - the product of a lifetime of experience and craft... It is a Rembrandt portrait of a novel... Don't miss it * New Statesman *
Excellently observed and quietly moving... Gardam invents an apparently composed character, and then disassembles him into pieces which - on closer inspection - look jagged and in poor repair * Independent on Sunday *
Gardam pulls off the near-impossible trick of great emotional depth delivered with wingtip lightness... Her characters are drawn with rich humour, and Old Filth himself is a marvellous, moving creation whose company you find yourself sad to leave * Telegraph *
Told with compassion and great style, Gardam seems to get better as she gets older -- John Humphrys * New Statesman *
Sparkles with Gardam's wit, sensibility and poignancy and it deservedly earned an Orange Prize nomination... a fictional life of absorbing, emotional sophistication about memory, loss and the vestiges of empire... a beautiful, melancholy novel which captivates, saddens and delights * Observer *
Will bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated and - a quality encountered all too rarely in contemporary culture - adult * Washington Post *
Beautifully written and strangely moving * Spectator *
A novel of great perception and quietly killing prose * Independent *
With superb skill and economy, Jane Gardam encapsulates the long lifetime of Sir Edward Feathers... Witty, humane, wise - this end-of-Empire tragicomedy is a masterclass in conducting shifting empathies * Daily Mail *
Darkly funny, huge of heart and socially fearless in its reach. Virtually perfect -- Francis Spufford
Jane Gardam, once shortlisted for the Booker Prize, is one of our finest novelists yet her work has yet to reach a wide readership. Like Samuel Beckett, she continually explores the corrosive loneliness of being alive and the courage it takes to continue...Readers will relish Old Filth for its compassionate wisdom, its comprehension of the way we lived then and live now, and for its absolute mastery of authorial tone - the product of a lifetime of experience and craft. It is a Rembrandt portrait of a novel. Don't miss it. * Amanda Craig, New Statesman *
What a spiky brilliant sledgehammer of a novel is Jane Gardam's Old Filth * Patrick Ness *
I recommend it wholeheartedly for its economy, breadth of narrative, and its insight, humour and pathos -- Tracey Thorn * Mail on Sunday *
This novel is surely Gardam's masterpiece. On the human level, it is one of the most moving fictions I have read for years...This is the rare novel that drives its reader forward while persistently waylaying and detaining by the sheer beauty and inventiveness of its style. One must savour every phrase. The marriage of quirky eccentricity and psychological authenticity is a Gardam technique, but here her cunning wit, moving deftly between scenes and eras, displays the tragedy of a vintage world forever passing away * Guardian *
Typical excellence and compulsive readability...the miracle of "Old Filth" is that its hero eludes sociological or psychological pigeonholing. If he is a characteristic Raj orphan, he is also triumphantly his own man * New York Times *
Beautiful, vivid and defiantly funny * The Times *
A magnificent, deeply moving and compassionate portrait of an era and a sentimental education * Daily Mail *