Author:Helen Dunmore
In this collection of short stories, the author takes the reader into a sensuous world of endless winters and midnight sun. As far apart as Finland, the Austrian Tyrol, and upstate New York, these stories come alive to the touch of estrangement, misunderstanding, sexuality and loss.
Not since J.D. Salinger's For Esme With Love and Squalor have I enjoyed so much a collection of stories. I mean pleasure – real pleasure.
—— Paul Durcan , The Cork ExaminerMacLaverty is one of the best practitioners of the genre we have.
—— New StatesmanHis prose is invisible, free of tricks, as though it was your own thoughts.
—— ObserverBeautifully constructed, minutely observed, filled with the poetry of longing, told with an economy and simplicity which makes their small tragedies even more powerful and moving… MacLaverty has created an imagined Ulster which can stand side by side with Joyce's Dublin. Long may he continue.
—— GuardianMacLaverty has a knack for endowing the workaday with a little poetry.
—— IndependentMacLaverty's jaunty, light prose just skips over it all: here a turn of phrase, there a modest observation that lays a whole scene open. The effect is, as one of the characters says, "beyond rubies''.
—— Daily TelegraphMacLaverty is an exhilarating, tender, humorous writer… who can set a scene and create a character with Chekhovian delicacy and economy.
—— Sunday TelegraphExpert, elegant, mature and passionate.
—— ScotsmanCompelling tales of family dramas in troubled times.
—— HeraldCharacters all but leap off the page with believability in these marvellous stories of life (and death) in Belfast. Funny...and forlorn, they are triumphs of exactness – Joyce and Chekhov come to mind – in which time, place and personality are caught with unshowy authority and not a word seems wasted.
—— Peter Kemp , The Sunday TimesBitter-sweetness is the mood of many of these stories. MacLaverty is a generous and sympathetic writer, one who is capable of celebrating joy and happiness, while remaining aware that life often brings more disappointments than rewards.
—— Scotsman (Web)A masterpiece of wit and elegance.
—— Elspeth Barker , Literary ReviewThe author charts the various stages of life with engaging curiosity and earthy compassion... The publishers, Jonathan Cape, have done a fine job with this handsome and substantial collection.
—— Keith Hopper , Times Literary SupplementAll the customary satisfactions of Burnside's writing – anomie, menace, flashes of violence and cruelty, hallucination and snow – but multiplied.
—— Sunday TelegraphEven Burnside’s most routine stories have beauty and intelligence. He is never less than something like brilliant.
—— Daily TelegraphA tremendous collection from a writer working at the full tilt of his gifts.
—— Kevin Barry , Ormskirk Advertiser