Jonathan Yardley
Taken together, [Old Filth and The Man in the Wooden Hat] are a British equivalent of Evan S. Connell's classics of Americana, Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge…As to Gardam's pair of novels, what the old song says about love and marriage must be said about them: You can't have one without the other. They are a set, his and hers. To my taste, they are absolutely wonderful, and I would find it impossible to choose one over the other. While Old Filth is principally about the man, his dark boyhood at the mercy of a distant, unfeeling father, with the wife a rather shadowy character in the background, The Man in the Wooden Hat fills in her side of the story, in the process revealing itself to be an astute, subtle depiction of marriage, with all its shared experiences and separate secrets.
—The Washington Post
Louisa Thomas
One of the few feats that's harder than doing justice to a complicated marriage is doing justice to it twice. The Man in the Wooden Hat revisits territory covered in Old Filth, but as Betty's story instead of Edward's. It's not necessary to have read the prior book to enjoy this one. If anything, The Man in the Wooden Hat makes the fractured plot and chronology of Old Filth easier to understand. Still, it's worth reading (or rereading) Old Filth. On its own, The Man in the Wooden Hat is funny and affecting, but read alongside Old Filth, it's remarkable. Gardam has attempted to turn a story inside out without damaging the original narrative's integrity—moving from black to white without getting stuck with gray. Little here is as it seemed in Old Filth, and both books are the richer for it.
—The New York Times
Library Journal
Edward Feathers, aka Old Filth (an acronym for "Failed in London, Try Hong Kong"), Gardam's proper lawyer and judge, is back for a second outing (after Old Filth), this time as seen through the eyes of his wife, Betty. Lately returned from her wartime work at Bletchley Park and now a regular among the expat community of Hong Kong, Betty is cocooned in comfortable gentility with Filth, a loving but distant husband largely preoccupied with his legal life. After a childhood spent in a Japanese labor camp, she is now unable to have children and largely unfocused; her brief premarital fling with Filth's arch enemy, Terry Veneering, creates an enduring bond with him and his young son, Harry, who fills a void in her life. VERDICT Admirers of Old Filth will be delighted to discover the backstory of his marriage and to renew acquaintances with a dear friend. Those meeting him and Mrs. Feathers for the first time will surely want more. An elegant portrait of an old-world marriage. Highly recommended.—Barbara Love, Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
