Press Reviews

• Guardian

  She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel, dissecting her characters with sublime, sharp-edged prose

• Julie Myerson

  Independent on Sunday

  Her prose is flawlessly seductive and comic, confidently witty and sensual

• Rachel Cooke

  She is a dazzling sort of a writer

• Paul Bailey

  Independent

  Shena Mackay notices a London that passes most writers by . . . Her London is not a convenient backdrop - it is the capital itself, vividly and freshly set down in glancing detail

• Kirkus Reviews

  A rich feast to be enjoyed page by page as Mackay, in often dazzling prose, describes the hilarious antics of bibulous writers or, with moving lyricism, those surprised by joy

• John Banville

  What a superbly imaginative writer she is . . . Mackay takes large risks, but when they come off the result is breathtaking

• New York Times

  An adroit novel that incisively but compassionately deploys a dysfunctional family with familiar problems - isolation, failed hopes, mutual deceit - in comic configurations