Riley's prose is as clear, sharp and sobering as her heroine's tonic water. Bubbles of bitter humour burst and repeat on the reader's tongue

Riley writes with a Woolf-ish exactitude... A brilliant and beautiful novel

She is still at her best when she writes - with great verve and invention - about her home town. She takes the rain that covers Manchester like a tent. And transforms it into something beautiful

A poignant novel of attempted departures... To read Riley is to be trapped inside a consciousness whose self-pity, indulgence and petulance are offset by taut style, wry humour, exactitude of image - a consciousness watching itself

Sharply written...An engaging read

A truly original new voice in fiction

It reads like a hit of espresso, a short intense experience that starts with endings and ends with a declaration of love

Enthralling . . . almost impossible to put down.

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