Golding [would be] a major figure among contemporary English novelists had he written nothing but Lord of the Flies and would still [be] a major figure had he written nothing but his other novels.

Lord of the Flies is not the first time that parody has turned to a novel in its own right…. Stung by what he considers an unreal view of life, the novelist is too magnanimous to stop at exposing the faults of another but goes on, to show incidentally that he can do better, but mainly to tell the truth. This is not the whole truth, but the truth about a part of life—perhaps only for part of the time…. Golding, I feel, knows the truth about part of human nature part of the time. An infringement on his speciality provoked him to write Lord of the Flies.

R. M. Ballantyne's The Coral...