RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)This is a hugely impressive work. Lee’s book has the scope of a novel; it is superbly researched and written with a rare empathy and understanding of human nature ... Hermione Lee has done as well anybody could to bring this fundamentally private man to light. But the core of Tom Stoppard remains hermetic, sealed. His biographer clearly shows he is fundamentally happiest when he is on his own, working through the night on his latest play ... He is a great playwright, and this is a great biography.
Joseph O'Connor
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)Joseph O’Connor’s enthralling latest novel, Shadowplay, brings to teeming life the London of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras ... a complex, fascinating triangular relationship between Stoker, Irving and Terry ... O’Connor stalks the emergence of Stoker’s one masterpiece just as meticulously as the Ripper does any of his victims ... Shadowplay climaxes memorably ... As O’Connor brilliantly shows, Stoker turns his immigrant status in London, his Irish otherness, to creative account in the writing of Dracula. This 19th-century novel also has a good deal to say about uncertain relations between Ireland and England.
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