Reviews round-up for William Golding: The Faber Letters

Reviews for William Golding: The Faber Letters, edited by Tim Kendall, have appeared in various publications.

In the Guardian, the book was chosen as ‘Book of the Day’ by Blake Morrison. Morrison traces the Golding/Monteith relationship through some well-chosen examples of editorial discussions and also highlights how the letters document their eventual close friendship. He praises Kendall’s excellent annotation and points out how the collection reveals a ‘lost publishing world’.

Ian Sansom welcomes the opportunity to ‘glimpse into the mind of one of the 20th century’s great novelists’, in his review for Literary Review. Sansom particularly emphasises that the letters are about the ‘often fretful labour of writing’ and calls Kendall’s editing ‘scrupulous’.

In The Spectator, Oliver Soden shares his view that Darkness Visible is the ‘best’ of Golding’s novels and discusses the correspondence between Golding and Monteith on this most mysterious of books. He also points out that the Letters show that ‘lives are made of trivia as well as spiritual struggle, and it is refreshing to keep company with an untortured Golding as he shops for bathroom suites or tends his garden.’

Reviews and mentions also appear in The Irish Times, Slightly Foxed, and across social media platforms.