Britain's Marcel Proust—The Times

Underpinning it is an exquisite balance of pain and beauty - an aspect of the sublime - as Welch brings to vivid life the existence lost to him for ever ... he is surprising us still—John Self, Guardian

The writer who most directly influenced my work ... he makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes—William Burroughs

A heightened, sensual journey ... it is Orvil's vibrant energy that allows this book to bubble ... beautifully odd ... spectacular—The Independent

Unlike any other person I had come across, Welch seemed to be speaking particularly to me—Alan Bennett

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger—John Waters