The ghost downstairs tantalises with fleeting likenesses—among them Bosch and Breughel, Coleridge and M. R. James; the last not only because "a ghost in the sunshine is a fearful thing" but also because of Leon Garfield's urbane, polished style….
The Pathetic Fallacy is used brilliantly in this book; fog and sunshine, the gloom of a basement and the fiery flickering of a steam train, by turns reflect and represent the alternating moods of greedy hope and sharp despair as the clerk, who has sold not his soul but seven years of his childhood to the old man downstairs, realises his mistake and tries in vain to think of a way out of the ingenious legal contract he has devised so cunningly. The book takes the form of a novella in two parts, with an elaborate system of loud and soft passages leading to a colossal crescendo and then to a coda of piercing sweetness. This is a fine piece of writing…. This is not a book for all children, or exclusively for children. Certainly it is not for anyone who reads for the story alone and has no feeling for words. Ultimately its value lies in its whole and not in its parts, as a piece of original, stimulating literature in an inevitable form. (p. 1973)
Margery Fisher, in her Growing Point, July, 1972.
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