This is the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written ... From the start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller … The novel’s cast is marvellous and vivid … A novel that deserves to be cherished and to last.

This powerful novel is a fine final flourish from a gifted writer … The power Dunmore gives to lowly female lives is inescapably moving, their stories taking us on a remarkable journey into the visceral heart of the female experience in Georgian Britain … [Dunmore is] one of the bravest and most versatile writers of her generation … This fine, fiery novel will surely be remembered as one of her best.

Like many of Dunmore’s novels, Birdcage Walk defies categorisation ... a blend of beauty and horror evoked with such breath-taking poetry that it haunts me still ... she has an extraordinary gift for taking the ordinary and familiar and rendering them new. When Tredevant’s growing unpredictability once more tightens the narrative, forcing the story back into the ominous and unsettling territory where it first began, it is easy to see why [Dunmore] has earned a place among the finest writers of historical fiction working today.

Helen Dunmore’s quietly brilliant historical novels are among the best fiction of our time.

A finely wrought psychological thriller … But it’s ultimately a novel about the ways in which we remember and, as such, a fitting contribution to Dunmore’s extraordinary legacy.

Elegant prose and brilliantly researched historical detail … a devastatingly good novel.

Part psychological thriller, part poetic exhumation of the past, it’s a fiery, first-rate historical novel from an author who’ll be much missed

A firecracker of a historical murder mystery story with which to leave her many admirers

Dunmore is skilled at claiming the huge canvasses of history and painting upon them exquisitely detailed human tragedies … Every scene is saturated with vivid period detail but Dunmore’s touch is feather-light.

A very good novel indeed

Dunmore just writes so effortlessly. Birdcage Walk is a joy to read.

Marvellous … Dunmore has the ability to evoke a sense of place and to write passages of thrilling and disturbing action … Dunmore is a remarkable novelist who sets herself very different challenges in each new novel. She meets this one triumphantly. It will surely be a great and thoroughly deserved success.

All Dunmore’s novels grip the reader through her imaginative power … compelling as ever.

[An] engrossing read … A thrilling novel of loyalty, betrayal and revolution, Dunmore once again fails to put a foot wrong.

In a tense plot exploring private and public violence, Helen Dunmore has proven why she is regarded as such a masterful storyteller.

[This] page-turner is classic Dunmore: a subtle exhumation of the past in which long-buried passions seem thrillingly immediate.

Intelligent, precise writing, a sure grip on a historical period; sensuous evocation of inner and outer worlds; delicate symbolism . . . subtle mixture of fiction and fact . . . I have rarely felt so anxious reading a novel that at the same time gave me so much pleasure.

This novel reminds us we all have something to pass down to the next generation

Dunmore’s deft skills in summoning up the ordinary life of a woman buffeted by extraordinary events are admirable.

A chilling drama enclosing a graceful and elegiac meditation on how to love well in turbulent political times

With her vivid prose, Dunmore is a writer who can make herself at home in any era … Birdcage Walk is a gripping read. And while it’s set in the past, this novel has a very contemporary message about the consequences of political turmoil.

Helen Dunmore’s delicate prose brings the atmosphere to life, and through Lizzie we see the glimmer of future feminism; Dunmore’s portrayal of grief is painfully honest and raw . . . This is a perfect example of how hidden stories of the past can be brought to life.

Part Gothic romance and part study of 1790s radical politics … There is a precision to Dunmore’s re-enactment of the past … but she also shows the devastating effects of historical events on ordinary people and how they shape them.

[A] fine novel … In all her fiction Dunmore shows an acute awareness of the interactions between the lives of ordinary individuals and the larger forces of history … It also presents a memorable portrait of a young woman confronting with courage the unforeseen consequences of her choices.

To read Dunmore is to live history rather than to study it ... It’s a wonderful book filled with experiences from [her] writing career

Superb

Another finely wrought historical novel

History from below in a commanding novel of revolution and romance

Helen Dunmore’s new novel concerns lives, consequential in their day, that pass away into utter oblivion… The result is a chilling work of domestic horror where no crust, candle nor cabbage goes uncounted

Birdcage Walk offers a persuasively grimy period evocation of contemporary domestic peril facing women, not least in an agonising childbirth scene that has traumatic consequences

Gripping historical drama

A story of idealism and possessive love, with strong and memorable characters

Helen definitely has a deft touch when it comes to history but the vividness of Lizzie and Diner's relationship is what stands out in glorious literary 3D. Speaking as someone raised in Bristol, I'll never be able to gaze down into the Gorge again without seeing that rowing boat. Bleak can be hauntingly beautiful and between these covers Helen demonstrates how

She vividly brings to live the struggle of women’s lives in late 18th century Bristol, and I recommend the book for an insight into Bristol in another time

From the swish of a silk dress, to the whoosh of the guillotine, Dunmore uses words with economic precision to build up the detail and suspense of this novel. Which haunts the reader just as the characters in it are haunted by the dead.

Flawless final historical novel from the late, great Helen Dunmore

A lively and inventive voice … by all account as brilliant as her other books

Early feminism and a hint of Grand Designs: a great mix’