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People saying it is beautiful and unambiguous rather spoilt it.
It's a face. It's OK. Not a great end to a good puzzle.

Certainly not 'beautiful' but surely 'unambiguous' (on this planet, at least).

The way people raved about it, I expected Dickens, smoking a pipe, while going through his marriage separation.

Thanks all. I agree with 'unambiguous' but I'm with you lumen - I'd perhaps expected an otherwise innovative and enjoyable puzzle to tie quotation, author, title and broad theme together through the shading to give a delicious PDM rather than a more mundane ITIM ('is that it?' moment).

Cypherhouse, thanks for your reply at # 64. I am fairly certain that I have the right word for my second three-letter word, as I have found the quotation by the person whose name appears in the circles. On the assumption that the word is a number, there are only four options and I believe that the highest figure is the correct one.

Schorley, thanks for your reply at # 63. I had already tried what you have suggested and I then followed this up by highlighting the mirror image cells. The result does not work. Because the quotation starts and ends at the asterisked cells, I also tried disregarding the top four lines, plus the four cells west of the higher asterisk and the five cells east of the lower asterisk, again highlighting the mirror image cells. This did not work either. Clearly I am barking up the wrong tree! Am I close with any of these approaches?

Not sure what you mean by "highlighting the mirror image cells" - mirror image of the 9? That's not what is meant here. The 9 are contained within the 33, but the 33 show mirror symmetry among themselves. SO yes the top 4 rows are off limits but the shading can extend in either direction from the asterisks.

Also is it time to consider whether there is error in a grid entry?

Post 71 also gives away quite a lot of info about what the end result looks like.

Where is the error buddy?

No, i was suggesting that 0pt0 might have made a mistake in one of their answers, preventing them from finding the quote. When you have eliminated the impossible, ...