About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Ferdia Lennon
Rave The Daily Mail (UK) \"What follows is a hugely entertaining yarn of ‘let’s do the show right here’ ups and downs, and, more seriously, a reminder of how both art and love keep humanity alive. It’s brilliantly imagined, right down to the fishy fug of the taverns, and I promise you won’t walk away dry-eyed.\
Hisham Matar
Rave The Daily Mail (UK) Resisting an obviously redemptive arc, it’s a muted, moving accounting of the things that make and moor a life, and the precious meanings created with those dearest to us.
Michael Cunningham
Positive The Daily Mail (UK) Themes of nature and nurture, the tyranny of the marriage plot and the complex reality of family constellations — often shaped by accident and contingency — recur in a fluent, if slightly weightless, tale.
Ilaria Bernardini
Positive The Daily Mail A thread of deliciously dark humour is woven into this involving web of performances and fictions; Bernardini is good on the magical thinking of grief, too. Not all will swallow the final twist, but it’s nonetheless a salutary reminder that we are players in others’ stories, even as we are consumed by our own.
Megan Hunter
Rave The Daily Mail (UK) The preposterousness of the solution is only momentarily distracting ... It permits Hunter to write viscerally and incisively about her real themes: the taboos of female desire and rage; the loss of self that comes with motherhood; and the violence inflicted on women\'s bodies by both childbirth and men ... As Lucy\'s anger becomes an energy, she begins to feel herself transforming. The momentum builds to a hallucinatory conclusion which sets this striking, pared-down modern myth apart from the mass of domestic noirs.
Megan Hunter
Positive The Daily Mail [The premise of the novel] permits Hunter to write viscerally and incisively about her real themes: the taboos of female desire and rage; the loss of self that comes with motherhood; and the violence inflicted on women\'s bodies by both childbirth and men ... The momentum builds to a hallucinatory conclusion which sets this striking, pared-down modern myth apart from the mass of domestic noirs.
Salley Vickers
Positive The Daily Mail The contrivances that bring the trio [of grandmothers] together are breezily carried off, and the plot allows likeable characters ample opportunity to reflect wisely on subjects including art, family and mortality. Yet this gentle, subtly autumnal, tale avoids sentimentality and sententiousness.
Joanna Cannon
Rave The Guardian The action centres on the baking summer of 1976 and while heatwaves have been the focus of other debuts – The Cement Garden most (in)famously – the weather here is skilfully promoted from backdrop to insidious personality...novel alternates between the perspectives of the avenue’s adult residents and the first-person narration of 10-year-old bright-spark Grace, whose precocity is robust enough to offset suspicions of feyness... Although the book’s messages – of acceptance, empathy and compassion – are unmistakable, it is never preachy; plot and structure are deftly, cleverly handled and descriptions combine delicacy with flair... With its combination of wit and heart, it’s easy to see why Cannon’s tale earned so many fans; with its implicit plea for understanding it will doubtless continue to add them in the months to come.