It is one of the most powerful domestic romances which has been published .
It is a book to make the pulses gallop and the heart beat, and to fill the eyes with tears

After searching libraries and bookshops everywhere for various copies of Jane Eyre, this is the one with the best introduction. It gives a fantastic insight into the feminist issues of the book, and gives a very powerful view of Jane. I read the book in a new light!

"Deep, sharp and narrow." That is a phrase which has been applied to some of the finest mathematical analysts: I should like to borrow it to describe Olivia Manning -- This is a remarkable book.

In common with the best writers, Olivia Manning has, besides wit, a sympathetic heart and a barometer-like sensitivity to the vagaries of human behaviour

It is passionate, it has a thickness of living about it, and it is made to blaze every now and then with an uncommonly fine bit of worldly wisdom, memorably delivered out of the side of the mouth