PositiveiNews (UK)The opening of Magpie is decidedly creepy ... Her handling of narrative is pacy and assured. Indeed, so compulsive is this book that there were times when, however quickly I read, it wasn’t fast enough. There is much talk on the book’s jacket about the twist, which is indeed electric, so much so that I had to go back and re-read the central section once my desire for plot had been sated ... The final third, by comparison, is less taut, although no less fascinating ... Magpie’s descriptions are often disturbingly memorable ... Day writes with hair-raising accuracy on the madnesses of fertility and pregnancy, infertility and miscarriage, love and longing ... Thank goodness that Magpie is funny, too ... It is perhaps a shame that Jake is left somewhat sketchy, as overshadowed by his mother in personality as he is by the mechanics of the plot. Marisa and Kate, too, exist more fully in their recollections of the past than they seem to in the present. Still, if we don’t ever quite seem to know these two women, at least not in the way their old friends do, perhaps that is the point.
Ann Patchett
RaveiNews (UK)Kind and generous she may be, but Patchett is capable of deploying the rapier where necessary ... If we are lucky, we will come upon someone in our lifetime who is truly good. Patchett’s writing reveals her to be such a person. Better still, she has a knack of finding this quality in everyone she meets. To immerse oneself in her book is to see the world as she does, in all its wonder and beauty. Read it, cherish it, buy a copy for your best friend, then read it once more.
Robin Sloan
PositiveThe Independent (UK)It’s all very hipster, which might be annoying were it not for Sloan’s lightness of touch. This is a world in which a man can own an early edition Kindle, \'so uncool it’s cool again\', a place where Google is \'developing a form of renewable energy that runs on hubris\', and where a breathy description of the internet giant’s headquarters is leavened by the appearance of \'a tall dude with blue dreadlocks pedalling a unicycle\' ... And if, in the end, the plot doesn’t entirely satisfy – the love story is a little weak, the 500-year old mystery rather too neatly solved – this novel’s ideas will linger long in the mind.
