Press

What the critics say

Of all the contemporary novelists who are compared to Dickens, Susan Hill probably has the best claim....Hill has produced another perfectly controlled work of fiction... What is striking about the best of Hill's fiction...is her almost Bachian ability to plumb the depths of emotion and bring the reader back out again
- Prospect

Hill impresses without seeking to astonish, and so is one of those rare writers whose work is brilliant in the single, secondary sense- not glittering, but distinguished- her prose as pleasing and surprising, say, as a perfectly round stone, or home-cooked haute cuisine
- Guardian

Hill's writing here is superb, conveying emotion and pain in the sparest of prose...a comforting keenly moving tale of endurance and the eternal springs of friendship and love
- Literary Review

It has a power beyond its pages; a haunting resonance between each stark sentence that stayed with me long after I'd turned the final page.The delicate balance between kindness and bitterness, hope and despair, a dying man and a dying town, are almost unbearably poignant. This is a short book that will live long in the memory
- Independent on Sunday

Concisely captures primal emotions and offers astonishing transformations... Movingly perceptive
- Sunday Times

I read this short novel in one sitting; it is an enthralling story, touching and ultimately positive
- Bookshelf

Susan Hill is the mistress of subtle atmosphere
- Country Life

Moving study of faith and humanity
- Sunday Business Post, Ireland

Beautiful novel
- Sainsbury's Magazine

A bittersweet family drama set in an English industrial town
- Sunday Telegraph

Richly satisfying
- Independent