‘A masterpiece’
Sunday Times
‘If you believe that English fiction is jaded, you must read Adam Thorpe . . . Tender, precise, tragicomic and unsentimental, it draws the reader into its task of reconstructing the unrecorded history of England. And sometimes you forget that it is a novel, and believe for a moment that you are really hearing the voice of the dead’
Hilary Mantel, Independent on Sunday
‘From its first page, you’re aware that you are in the presence of a writer with exceptional gifts. By the final one, you know he has used them to create a masterpiece’
Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
‘The most interesting first novel I have read these last years . . . We aren’t used to the many deep matters Thorpe touches on, nor to such a thorough grasp of the complex nature of our rural past, and through it, of all existence itself . . . Suddenly English lives again’
John Fowles, Guardian
‘These stories sing like psalms, robust and vibrant – a poet’s novel and a celebration that no social historian would dare attempt’
Nicholas Wollaston, Observer
‘One of the great British fictional works of our time’
LA Times