PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)Unlike in her previous novel, the narrative is polyphonic, skipping between close-third-person views of the different characters, and includes shorter, stranger descriptions of the countryside nestling between the chapters ... Moss can be very funny, and moments of humour creep in here, particularly when it is the women whom we see up close ... The result is baggier, more amorphous and slightly less dazzling than some of Moss’s previous work – particularly Ghost Wall – but it nonetheless displays her agility and range. Her ability to switch so smoothly between such different characters is remarkable, while some scenes are especially memorable for their poignancy and pathos, including the chapter in which a boy is battered by the elements when out on the loch in a canoe, and the episode of a woman with early-stage dementia.
Augustine Sedgewick
MixedThe Times (UK)That Hill is not terribly interesting, beyond his success and his meticulous cruelty, is disguised by Sedgewick cramming his narrative with many other characters. Sometimes three or four appear on as many pages, never to appear again or only fleetingly on a second mention. Some of them call out for a book themselves ... the latter half of Coffeeland is far more gripping than the endless talk of the variation in coffee prices. A more stern editor — one perhaps fired up with their morning brew — could have condensed this book down and tightened its focus, giving it the hit and bite of an espresso. Instead, the sprawling history of a place, a product and a family left this reviewer with the impression of an unsatisfactory, watery cup.
Ian Urbina
PositiveThe Times (UK)... gripping and shocking by turns ... [Urbina\'s] cast of characters as broad and as deep as the oceans themselves ... Most of the book clips along with the pace of a thriller. Urbina is best when describing chases and fights ... At the start of the book Urbina explains that, rather than force it into a \'single, straight-line narrative\', he has left it as a series of essays, for the readers to \'connect the dots\'. At times this is grating — the book doesn’t just sprawl, but hops around from subject to subject; episodes, such as the one on Sealand, bob up incongruously out of nowhere, like buoys near the shore. But perhaps this is appropriate too — the oceans are not just vast and deep, but unpredictable. More of the night sky has been mapped than the oceans’ depths; much still remains unknown. This book will make you look at them again and see them anew.
