_PUNCH:_ "An exhilarating, even intoxicating entertainment."
"One may cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge the brilliancy ... its absorbing interest, its sustained intellectual strength, and the splendour of its moral implications."
_ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS:_ "The colour, the humour, the irony, and the philosophy that make up the compound of his amazing books."
_CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE:_ "Besides achieving a performance in itself no less remarkable than its predecessors, Mr. Mackenzie does something new: he shows his teeth."
MR. JAMES DOUGLAS in _THE STAR:_ "A literary fake."
MR. ROBERT K. RISK in _THE SUNDAY TIMES._ "It will not permit itself to be read."
MR. HUGH WALPOLE in _THE NEW YORK SUN:_ "A new chunk from the erotic adventures of Sylvia Scarlett ... but this does not sound thrilling to everyone...."
MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
_TIMES:_ "We do not wish it any shorter, for it is almost wholly delightful in itself."
_STANDARD:_ "The architecture of the book is superb."
_LIVERPOOL COURIER:_ "A clear and beautiful and enchanting idyll of adolescence."
_ENGLISH REVIEW:_ "A more faithful picture of public school life than anything we know in English fiction."
_YORKSHIRE OBSERVER:_ "Mr. Mackenzie's style is a thing unique among the present writers of English."
_MANCHESTER GUARDIAN:_ "As difficult a task as fiction could undertake; but Mr. Mackenzie's tact and insight have brought him through with brilliant success ... something we would not willingly have missed."
_PUNCH:_ "There are aspects of this book that I should find it difficult to overpraise; its marvellously minute observation, and its humour, and above all its haunting beauty both of ideas and words.... I am prepared to wager that Mr. Mackenzie's future is bound up with what is most considerable in English fiction."
MR. F. M. HUEFFER in the _OUTLOOK:_ "Possibly 'Sinister Street' is a work of real genius--one of those books that really exist otherwise than as the decorations of a publishing season.... One is too cautious--or with all the desire to be generous in the world, too ungenerous--to say anything like that, dogmatically, of a quite young writer. But I shouldn't wonder!"
MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI