This text addresses the possible link between the lack of critical interest in Angus Wilson (1913- 1991), often seen as a minor or old-fashioned author over the last thirty years, and his fictional production that sometimes espouses an overtly middlebrow perspective. From this point of view, Late Call (1964) may be his most representative novel, on account of its formal humility and the ordinary character of its female protagonist. The novel boasts many feats, the most remarkable of which are: a male author"s capacity to realistically evoke the consciousness of a retired woman; the relation between the description of the typical way of living of the English middle class in a new town and the heroine"s identity as a former member of the rural proletariat of the 1900s; the dynamic tension between mass culture based on entertainment (television serials, light readings) and a meta-critical dimension that raises the question of the role of the "average" reader at the heart of such a standardised space.