After having read [Winter Garden] attentively, and yet without achieving total understanding, I went back and combed the text for vital clues. But they still eluded me….
Artistically, it's of small consequence because the book doesn't depend on plausibility of plot for any appreciable part of its achievement. It is a phantasy in which the Kafkaesque strangeness and the Waughian (isn't it time a pronounceable adjective like Wavian were adopted?) humour reside in the fine structure of Beryl Bainbridge's idiosyncratic prose.
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