Losing Battles | Literary Criticism & Book Review

Losing Battles Critical Overview

Losing Battles appeared in 1970 to virtually unanimous praise from critics and is still praised today. New York Times critic James Boatwright called the novel "a major work of the imagination and a gift to cause general rejoicing." He continued:

Losing Battles is conclusive evidence of what many
have long believed: that Eudora Welty possesses the
surest comic sense of any American writer alive. It
is a comedy . . . that presents character without fake
compassion or amused condescension, a comedy that
releases, illuminates, renews our own seeing, that
moves in full knowledge of loss, bondage, panic, and
death.

Paul Bailey, in Times Literary Supplement, wrote that in this "exceptionally beautiful novel" Welty had outshone some of her foremost peers:

The prevailing tone is one of glorious ordinariness,
but one that never sinks into the terminally...
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