Press Reviews
- Sophie Dahl
NIGHTINGALE WOOD is in essence, a sprawling, delightful, eccentric fairy tale . . . There is romance galore, a transformative dress, and a ball, much dizzy kissing in hedgerows and beyond, spying, retribution and runaways, fights and a fire, poetry and heartbreak, a few weddings AND funerals, and a fairytale ending with a twist. What luxury to stumble upon this quirky book, and the fascinating modern woman who wrote it. It is a rare unadulterated pleasure and high time for its encore
- Guardian
Gibbons's heroines are plucky, determined and quietly hedonistic. But she can do melancholy with the best of them, too, not to mention melodrama
Sophie Dahl
What luxury to stumble upon this quirky book, and the fascinating modern woman who wrote it. It is a rare unadulterated pleasure and high time for its encore
Sam Jordison
GuardianNightingale Wood is very impressive . . . Gibbons is superb on middle class life in the years immediately before the second world war, on the erosions of class division and ongoing snobbery . . . relying on icicle wit and sharp observation to lambast conventional morality. Gibbons also displays a tender side. There is real sadness in some of her characters, instead of deliberately heightened rural dolour - and it winds up as a love story that would please Jane Austen . . . I've loved every minute
- Guardian
Gibbons's heroines are plucky, determined and quietly hedonistic. But she can do melancholy with the best of them, too, not to mention melodrama
Sophie Dahl
What luxury to stumble upon this quirky book, and the fascinating modern woman who wrote it. It is a rare unadulterated pleasure and high time for its encore
Sam Jordison
GuardianNightingale Wood is very impressive . . . Gibbons is superb on middle class life in the years immediately before the second world war, on the erosions of class division and ongoing snobbery . . . relying on icicle wit and sharp observation to lambast conventional morality. Gibbons also displays a tender side. There is real sadness in some of her characters, instead of deliberately heightened rural dolour - and it winds up as a love story that would please Jane Austen . . . I've loved every minute
- Daily Mail
A sharp-edged romantic comedy, we have a chance to see what we've been missing