SOURCE: “Fantastic,” in Spectator, Vol. 243, No. 7889, September 22, 1979, p. 24.

In the following review, King offers a generally positive assessment of The Old Jest, but criticizes certain unbelievable elements in the story.

We all have lists of things that, though there is nothing intrinsically wrong with them, just happen not to be to our tastes. My own list would include restaurants in which the service is better than the food and the décor than either; cars, however large or powerful, with only two doors ocean-cruises; and literary fantasies. The last of these aversions makes it impossible for me fully to enjoy Orlando, Lady into Fox or The Master and Margarita, much though I admire Virginia Woolf, David Garnett and Mikhail Bulgakov, and it also makes it difficult for me to be sure of being fair to Wild Nights, much though I admire Emma Tennant too.

This novel functions simultaneously...