PositiveIrish Independent (IRE)Has an ambitious historical sweep spanning eight decades ... Despite the amount of ground it covers, it remains fast-paced, and Boyne — a talented storyteller — handles his historical material skilfully ... Gretel is an intriguing character, if not always a likeable one — presumably this is intentional — and is more convincingly drawn in old age than as a teenager or young woman ... It explores guilt and complicity, asks whether knowledge is a form of guilt, and examines a life of evasion and deception.
Andrew Miller
PositiveIrish Independent (IRE)An interesting premise underpins this novel ... Miller keeps the reader in suspense about what his protagonist did on that summer day in Ardoyne, a deprived, nationalist area of north Belfast. But readers have their suspicions ... Readers will experience varying reactions to this key character, whose perspective is the one through which events are presented ... Miller’s world-building is utterly convincing ... Although there is much to absorb readers, the ending felt premature. Clearly, Miller made a conscious decision to conclude his narrative where he did. But a glimpse of what lay ahead...would have been possible without altering the novel’s central thrust.
Hugo Hamilton
RaveThe Independent (IRE)Inventive ... The reader is dealing with two novels here, and a mosaic of interlocking narratives ... With flair and feeling, Hamilton weaves Roth’s work through his own, in this imaginative act of storytelling ... As human beings, we are nothing but passing facts, Hamilton reminds us. But excellence in literature has the potential for longevity.
Claire Keegan
RaveThe Irish Independent (IRE)Elegiac ... But this is first and foremost a story rather than a polemic. Its power lies in its simplicity—it almost reads like a fable, consciously laced with nativity references ... A tender, condensed and pitch-perfect tale. As soon as I reached the end, I returned to the beginning to read it again.
