The group of people Louis Auchincloss subjects to ironic examination in [The Country Cousin] are, as they almost always are in his novels, Republican, rich, and thoroughly White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, their wealth coming from inheritance, the law and the Stock Exchange….

Mr. Auchincloss handles the legal as well as the non-legal twists and turns with easy skill, and conveys subtly, and with fairness, the hypocrisy and corruption that taint even so high-principled a fellow as Jamey. But the cultural exhibitionism which pervades the book, even if intended as caricature, is excessive, to say the least.

Adolf Wood, "At the Shrine of Art," in The Times Literary Supplement (© Times Newspapers Ltd. (London) 1978; reproduced from The Times Literary Supplement by permission), No. 3998, November 17, 1978, p. 1347.