Stefan,… [the] unheroic hero [of Polonaise], is a writer thwarted by 'the unreliability of his characters'. He persuades himself that he is a Marxist, but when he tries to write about 'positive heroes', his carefully constructed puppets run amok and shock even him, their creator. He concludes that his 'muse', his creativity, 'is irony, undiluted irony'. He rejects communism because communists still believe in the perfectibility of the soul; the Soviet Union 'is Holy Russia under another name'.

Stefan is a typical Read character, introspective, intelligent, determined to use self-knowledge in order to cultivate his true individuality….

Polonaise is a rich and resonant novel of ideas, saved from solemnity by the astringency of Read's style and his ability to make the most eccentric characters believable. Where it fails, as The Upstart, Read's last novel, failed, is in slipping at crucial points from drama into melodrama. (p. 688)

John Mellors...