RaveThe Spectator (UK)Keegan’s prose is translucently plain and simple. She works on a reader almost subliminally.
Claire Keegan
RaveThe Spectator (UK)\"The author once takes a big issue and, with her characteristic quiet brilliance, illuminates it in a small homely setting ... Keegan\'s prose is translucently plain and simple. She works on a reader almost subliminally.\
Jennifer Egan
MixedThe Spectator (UK)The Candy House is not so much a novel as a collection of exceptionally clever, sometimes funny short stories, told from every possible viewpoint ... The chronology of The Candy House is scrambled, its structure mysteriously incorporates electronic dance music (Build Break Drop Build) and the whole is a dizzying, disturbing mishmash of family saga, sci fi and literary high jinks. Nothing is explored in any depth. There are so many characters that it’s hard to remember, let alone care for, any of them.
Sebastian Barry
RaveThe Spectator (UK)... forget the plot: it’s the writing that puts Barry on the side of the angels. It is vivid, lyrical and awash with metaphors and quasi-biblical proverbs ... The inner lives of the characters shine with a timeless quality ... Halfway through this novel I was so much under Barry’s spell I wanted to read everything he’d ever written. By the end? Why did I feel slightly over-charmed? And is there a word for that? Goddammit, Sebastian Barry will know it.
Elizabeth Cook
PositiveThe Spectator (UK)... a kind of meditative triptych rooted in the tale of David and Bathsheba. The story has everything a novelist could wish for in its themes of power, lust, love, faith and conscience ... Primarily a poet, Cook writes with impressive empathy for David. There is both a painterly eye and a physicality about her prose.
