The Dark Circle

Press Reviews

• Christobel Kent

  Guardian

  Exhilaratingly good . . . This is a novel whose engine is flesh and blood, not cold ideas . . . Grant brings the 1950s - that odd, downbeat, fertile decade between war and sexual liberation - into sharp, bright, heartbreaking focus

• Evening Standard

  A Grant novel is always a treat . . . Grant captures the stigma that surrounded TB perfectly

• Spectator

  A writer whose language crackles with vitality and whose descriptive powers are working at such a high level

• John Harding

  Daily Mail

  Linda Grant brings a forgotten slice of social and medical history to life by conjuring a rich cast of disparate - though equally desperate - characters observed with wry humour and affection to produce an absorbing and profoundly moving story

• Stylist

  The novel is funny but also poignant . . . I loved it

• John Sutherland

  The Times

  The Dark Circle is, beneath its narrative surface, fiercely political. She poses a large, naggingly relevant, question. What would (will?) privatisation of the NHS mean? Read this fine, persuasive, moving novel and contemplate - if you can dare to - that awful possibility

• Hannah Beckerman

  Observer

  Fascinating . . . a revealing insight: both funny and illuminating, it is a novel about what it means to treat people well, medically, emotionally and politically

• Anthony Gardner

  Mail on Sunday

  Grant is so good at conjuring up atmosphere and writes with earthy vivacity

• Lucy Scholes

  Independent

  Contemporary issues linger ominously in Grant's margins, silently enriching what's already an astonishingly good period piece

• Jewish Chronicle

  Her cast of characters is nothing less than a portrayal of post-war, class-riven Britain from the indolent aristocracy, to Oxford-educated blue stockings, and from car salesmen to the bottom of the pile, German emigres and East End Jewish lowlifes . . .This is a novel, above all, about trauma caused by the "dark circle" of tuberculosis, and results in a "tight circle" of comradeship. The ambitious reach of the novel is wisely held in check by its focus on a time when Lenny and Miriam had to discover for themselves what it was to be human

• Ben Lawrence

  Sunday Telegraph

  A rich, engaging novel, further proof that Grant can conjure up a special mood in a specific period with great humour

• Alex Preston

  Observer

  Extraordinarily affecting

• Natasha Walter

  An extraordinary depiction of the physical and emotional experience of illness. She marvellously communicates the poignancy of youth and sexuality in the presence of impending death. Grant's voice is unlike any other writer; so immediate and engaged even when writing historical fiction

• Joan Bakewell

  An amazing subject, wonderfully depicted, with plausible people whom I grew to love . . . the most surprising plot developments. So original and full of life