PositiveThe Seattle TimesIn The Secret Scripture, Irish novelist and playwright Sebastian Barry has created a wondrous character in Roseanne, who is secretly writing (and burying under the floorboards) not so much a memoir but an accounting of her life and the events — a few joyful, but far too many others devastating — that brought her to this place … This is a powerful story, and [Barry] tells it compellingly. But he is after bigger game: capturing the mutability and unreliability of memory and how its imperfections alter what we believe is true.
Paul Harding
RaveThe Hartford CourantPaul Harding's Tinkers defies expectations and proves to be one of 2009's most intriguing debuts … Interspersed with descriptions of the harsh yet lovely landscape of Maine, George's dying, Howard's life – which takes a very surprising turn – and the old preacher's writings are sections purporting to be from an 18th-century handbook on mending clockworks. The turning seasons, the race and crawl of time, the ebb and flow of life are Harding's materials, and he regards them with a watchmaker's eye.
