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A Way Through the Wood

ebook / ISBN-13: 9781474601214

Price: £9.99

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A psychological study of marriage, loyalty and justice, A WAY THROUGH THE WOOD is a remarkable post-war novel.

‘A superb storyteller’ SUNDAY TIMES ‘I’d place him up there with Graham Greene’ Philippa Gregory

‘Balchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heart’ Ruth Rendell

‘Balchin has been absurdly overlooked for too long’ Julian Fellowes

James Manning is perfectly content. He has a successful life as a businessman in the city, a bright young thing of a wife, Jill, and an idyllic home in the countryside, where he is a local magistrate. The only fly in the ointment as far as he can see is the ‘Honbill’ – the Honourable William Stephen Fitzharding Bule, a gentleman with too much time on his hands.

When a young man is knocked off his bicycle and subsequently dies, James is sure that the culprit is Bule – after all, he saw a scratch on his car the day of the accident and the car matches the description to a T. But events take an unexpected turn when James discovers that it was really Jill driving the car that day, and he is torn between obligations of class, loyalty and justice.

A WAY THROUGH THE WOOD was the inspiration for SEPARATE LIES, a 2005 British drama film adapted by Academy Award-winning writer Julian Fellowes and starring Tom Wilkinson, Emily Watson and Rupert Everett.

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Reviews

Probably no other novelist of Mr. Balchin's value is so eminently and enjoyably readable . . . [He] never lets the reader down
Elizabeth Bowen, TATLER
The missing writer of the Forties . . . Balchin's professional skill gives a meaning to brilliance which the word doesn't usually possess
Clive James, NEW REVIEW
One of the best writers, and certainly one of the best stylists, to come out of the war years
Michael Powell
I'd place him up there with Graham Greene
Philippa Gregory
Balchin has done so much to raise the standard of the popular novel
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Balchin can tell an exciting story as well as any novelist alive
SUNDAY CHRONICLE
A brilliant novelist . . . A writer of real skill
NEW STATESMAN
Mr. Balchin is a writer of such considerable and varied gifts . . . He is certainly one of the most intelligent novelists
TIME AND TIDE
He can always be relied on to give us the set-up magnificently
BBC
A remarkable storyteller
DAILY MAIL
[An] inexplicably neglected author
THE TIMES
He tells a story gloriously
DAILY TELEGRAPH
Balchin has the rare magnetic power that draws the human eye from one sentence to the next
EVENING STANDARD
Perhaps the most successful British author to emerge during the war
SATURDAY EVENING POST
One of the hopes of British novel-writing . . . A writer of genius
John Betjeman
Balchin has been absurdly overlooked for too long
Julian Fellowes
A superb storyteller
SUNDAY TIMES
The novelist of men at work
GUARDIAN
Balchin writes about timeless things, the places in the heart
Ruth Rendell, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH