‘A sad, beautiful, frightening account of one man’s pointless death . . . Every character is explored for their contradictions, every situation observed for its nuances, every easy judgement suspended . . . Hooper finds the common humanity in the accused and the accuser, the police officer and the street drinker, the living and the dead.’
Mark Dapin, GOOD WEEKEND, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD
‘A brilliant vignette in which one appalling incident illuminates a saga of social breakdown.’
Sara Wheeler, THE TIMES
‘Masterful . . . A kind of moral thriller about power, wretchedness and violence.’
Philip Roth
‘The country’s finest work of literature so far this century. A haunting moral maze, described with such intimate observation and exquisite restraint that I kept pausing to take a breath and silently cheer the author . . . An Australian classic.’
Robert Drewe, THE AGE
‘Like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood . . . this gracefully nuanced book is about . . . the nature of death itself.’
Duncan Campbell, THE GUARDIAN
‘Hooper does write with almost indecent felicity . . . with the mathematical rigour of a thriller-writer.’
Aileen Reid, SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
‘A real life Heart of Darkness in the Australian badlands.’
TIME OUT, Sydney
‘[Hooper] finds a muscular music even when confronting sordid truths.’
THE NEW YORKER
‘Important, brilliant, perceptive . . . marvellous.’
Phillip Knightley, LITERARY REVIEW
‘Extraordinary.’
Alison McCulloch, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
‘An adrenaline rush to the heart.’
THE OPRAH MAGAZINE
‘[Chloe Hooper] is the antipodean Joan Didion, the Truman Capote of our times.’
Alice Nelson, THE WEST AUSTRALIAN
‘Her spare but polished narrative, through understatement and detail, gathers force like a river after rain.’
Andrew Rule, THE SUNDAY AGE
‘Observant, acute and compassionate . . . [Hooper] favours nuance over cliché, context over judgement.’
TIME MAGAZINE, Australia