I confess to being an uncompromising admirer of John P. Marquand's novels. The Late George Apley, Wickford Point, and H. M. Pulham, Esquire are splendid books. The later works, from So Little Time on, contain many remarkable passages, and even the last novel, Of Women and Timothy Harrow, holds up well. I herewith make the following extravagant claims for Marquand; as a recorder of the upper-middle-class scene he is the equal of Edith Wharton; as an explorer of nostalgia, he can stand comparison with F. Scott Fitzgerald; as an ironist, he ranks with Thackeray, to whom, for plain reasons, he has been frequently linked. (p. 696)
Leo Gurko, in American Literature (reprinted by permission of the Publisher; copyright 1973 by Duke University Press, Durham, North Carolina), January, 1973.
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