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