"A grand achievement in storytelling... A lovely heartbreaker of a novel that asks the hard questions."–
USA Today "Ingeniously explores the consuming power of both passion and the past."–
Entertainment Weekly "What a pleasure it is to be able to open a book and relax into the flow of a beautifully written narrative...With an ambling, intimate candor, O'Faolain tells Kathleen's story, present and past...And always, of course, behind everything is Ireland itself–beautiful, maddening Ireland."–Lynn Freed,
Washington Post Book World "A big, generous, essentially old-fashioned novel, taking its unhurried time to tell a story and create a central character, to have a cool, long look at history and romance...There is tenderness here, and humanity, and a persuasive account of what happens when a person allows the world to enter into her once more."–Catherine Lockerbie,
The New York Times Book Review "O'Faolain is] a reader's writer, with a flair for straightforward, Dickensian storytelling."–Meghan O'Rourke,
Vogue "Full of brilliant writing and heartbreaking insight...Unlike all but the best writers, O'Faolain isn't afraid to write about a character as smart and complicated as she is."–Malcolm Jones,
Newsweek "A smart and crisply written book, tinged with sadness...Kathleen's journey back to one of Ireland's humbler backwaters after a fashionable life as a near-English traveling journalist is fraught with emotion and politics. Indeed, one of the achievements of this lovely, haunting, and intelligent novel is demonstrating how tightly these elements are linked in the modern Irish - not only in the manner that makes international news, but at the levels that give color and shape to an individual's everyday life."–Vince Passaro,
Elle "What keeps you engrossed is the fact that the novel interweaves the contemporary bits...with an irresistible mystery...I can't remember the last time I read a novel that so eloquently describes the erotic dilemma of middle age–the way that hunger for sexual and emotional satisfaction, unabated by time, intersects with a shocked recognition that the body itself changes, or even fails...It is [O'Faolain's] journalistic eye for detail that etches Kathleen's dilemma into your memory."–Daniel Mendelsohn,
New York
