Just sometimes, a book is so complete, so compelling and potent, that you are fearful of breaking its hold. This is one: a novel about (as its title might suggest) devastating damage and the humanity that, almost unfathomably, remains...with awesome skill and whiplash wit, Evie Wyld knits together past and present, with tension building all the time. In Peter Carey and Tim Winton, Australia has produced two if the finest storytellers working today. On this evidence, Wyld can match them both

Wyld sympathetically explores the blight of war and violence on three generations of a working-class Australian family

Wyld's first novel is a remarkable achievement: a potent and compelling exploration of the connections between father and son, and the legacy of violence and repression

Superb first novel

Wyld has a feel for beauty and for the ugliness of inherited pain

Filled with light and tragedy. This is a sad novel and lovely novel from a talented new writer

It's a cauterising, cleansing tale, told with muscular writing

A stunning work from a brilliant new voice

This adroit examination of loss, lostness and trauma is the beginning of great things

This jewel of a book

Written in a pitchy, crystal-sharp prose, this is a compelling read that uses the Australian landscape to mirror its characters' equally unforgiving emotional terrain

Manages to create a confidently uneasy and gripping atmosphere

Its richness of prose is evocative

It is every inch the assured and stunning debut that everyone suggests

Wyld is a languorous writer with great skill in characterisation...will delight

This is a young writer with talent to burn

Told with quiet, characterful poise, the noel succeeds in evoking not only Australia's epic geographical landscape, but its literary terrain too summoning echoes of some of that country's finest writers,

This is a highly accomplished first novel. Evie Wyld is not a show off writer. She has a clean, clear prose style which is exactly right in the service if her story, and the best ear for dialogue in a long time.

Wyld's debut novel dissects the misery that seeps inexorably from one generation to the next

Wyld can write very well, in a vivid descriptive style reminiscent of Tim Winton's.

Wyld's superb skills at portraying a hot, dusty landscape and her psychological insight will pull you inexorably in.

Superb assured first novel about fathers and sons. Pitch-perfect prose

A very impressive first novel. Wise and wry, it uses its Australian bush setting to great effect, Wyld's protagonists fleeing there from wars, both literal and familial. She writes great characters and makes you love them as she nails them.

This is a sad yet beautiful story of fathers and sons, their wars and the things they will never know about each other

Cleverly metafictional, humorously perverse, and impressively original