In a world where people know ever less about their neighbours, this graphic novel is both a fantasy…and a cautionary tale. Anyone who has ever lain in bed at night listening to the sound of unknown voices on the other side of the cardboard wall will relish the way she lets her imagination off its leash…funny…beautiful looking…this book might almost be alive

An enjoyable tale, dark but full of energy, fascinated by the private lives and perversity that bulge beneath suburbia's facade

A damn fine book; hugely, spectacularly impressive

Karrie Fransmen breaks all the rules of storytelling accumulated over the past thousands of years. She creates a confusion at first, then bursts into the obvious and simplest fact; that all the stories of and in our lives are personal and private.... The only way this wonderful book could have been written is by illustration...not by word... rather like the hidden stories drawn on the walls of caves

Fransman's dual background as a psychology and sociology student and a creative advertiser helps underpin her skills at both characterisation and communication… By its melodramatic finales, The House That Groaned acknowledges some scars that miss their chance to heal, but also gives us a kind of happy ending for two tenants

You can't help but be by turns moved and repulsed by the inhabitants of 141 Rottin Road. But beneath their outrageous behaviour and serious hang-ups, they still have a touching humane side that we can all relate to, with their issues with body image, loneliness and pitiful attempts to overcome past traumas that have shaped the people they have become. I'm not usually a huge fan of graphic novels because I find them too shallow with superficial, stereotypical characters but that is certainly not true of The House That Groaned. Love it or hate it, you will be thinking about the characters long after you've turned the final page

An absolute pleasure to read

Deliriously funny.

An ingenious intertwining of real life and make believe, Glass Town explores the Brontës’ creative impulse and its effect on their lives. It is the perfect combination of clever, crazy, and just a tiny bit creepy, and will appeal to anyone who has wondered about how imagination shapes us, as well as to card-carrying Brontë fans.

The Brontës' early stories of fantastical worlds...have been inventively brought to life in this beautiful new graphic novel. There's a poignant edge to the escapism.

Magical. Isabel Greenberg's drawings are delightful and her imaginative response to the young Brontës' fantasy lives is touching, funny and perceptive.

A totally immersive read into the world of the famous Brontë juvenilia, both of the fiction and its creators. The experience of this made-up world is so real, it brings us closer to the family themselves, and you feel like you understand what it was to be a Brontë sibling – gifted, isolated, tragic, and loved. Isabel Greenberg is the only one who could bring us here, having honed a perfect style that feels timeless, dark, and a little otherworldly. Who else but the Brontë children could appreciate that?

Isabel Greenberg has an uncanny gift for the tone of storytelling that makes you feel like you're tucked up safe in bed being told a story by someone with a twinkle in their eye... The art throughout is consistently inventive and engaging, playing with the overlapping of reality and fantasy… The book works on many levels but perhaps the most powerful is the feeling of a child's imagination at work within the heart and mind of a grown genius in grief.

Glass Town, the graphic novel by Isabel Greenberg, is a wonder. Utterly beautiful, richly imagined - a beautiful vision of the young Brontës and the freedom and expression that imagination brings.

Here, Greenberg creates a metatextual fantasy, placing the young [Brontë] siblings directly into their imagined world.

An intriguing, insightful not-quite-biography of the Brontë which explores both their real and imaginary worlds.

A tale about the collision between dreamlike places of possibility and constrained lives. None of the Brontë would reach 40. Yet their work still entrances us and Greenberg gives their tangled early creations gripping and generous life.

A vivid foundation story for the great torrent of romantic fiction that was shortly to burst forth.