Powerful… Poignant, bleak and haunting, this is a small masterpiece

Compulsively readable

Hill deploys her not inconsiderable power to weave a haunting story

Beautifully, even lovingly, told

There is something Hardyesque in the tragic momentum of this story

Gripping all the way to its unexpected end

A perfectly judged story of people living hard, narrow lives

Hill's beautiful, soulful descriptions of pit village life make this every bit as gripping as her longer spine-chilling stories

In this taught, tense story, written with that unsparing economy which is such a feature of Hill's recent fiction, everyone longs to escape... Ted is thoughtful, compassionate, loving and misguidedly chivalrous... The sparseness of Hill's style provides the perfect medium for exploring his predicament

Hill's taut prose exudes a constant darkness... you are left unsettled and haunted by the seeming inevitability of their troubled lives

Taut, tense story, written with that unsparing economy which is such a feature of Hill's recent fiction

The versatile Hill tells a perfectly judged story of people living hard, narrow lives

So well-written, so deeply imagined, that the reader will find delight even in the encircling gloom. Love may not conquer all, but Art can

[Hill] does what all good writers must set out to do: she made me read until I had the answer

Hill’s sparse style provides the perfect medium for exploring this family’s predicament

Hill does a wonderful job of evoking life in this enclosed community

A masterpiece of economy and control