Author:Robert McLiam Wilson
'I'm Ripley Bogle. I'm the prince of the pavements, I'm the Parkbench King and the cold winds of the outside permanently fleck my flesh. To come with me, you must brave the air and the wide, bare boredom. The vast outdoors is my house and hall. It's with purpose, fear and gratitude that I stalk the streets of the city.'
As the scene shifts from the streets of London, to Oxford and Belfast, the tramp, Ripley Bogle, narrates his gripping and alarming story in which it becomes increasingly difficult to tell what is true and what is fiction.
An astonishing performance, fluent, profound, angry. It made me laugh; it made me think; it made me envious
—— Irish TimesProbably one of the best Irish novels to have appared in the last decade. It goes straight for the jugular
—— The TimesThe eponymous antihero of this splendid anti-coming-of-age novel is a classic Irish rogue: handsome, charming, astute, articulate, arrogant, irresponsible, passionate - above all, a chap who can make you laugh three times per page... Underneath all the wordplay, [Wilson] reveals with true eloquence the horrors of growing up during the Troubles
—— Publishers WeeklyA splendid novel, beautifully conceived and crafted.
—— Pat ConroyMythical and mystical, Mistress of Spices is reminiscent of fables and fairy tales. . . . The story Divakaruni tells is transporting, but it is her gift for metaphor that makes this novel live and breathe, its pages as redolent as any freshly ground spice.
—— BooklistFor ARRANGED MARRIAGE, 'As irresistible as the impulse which leads her characters to surface to maturity, raising their heads above the floods of silver ignorance'
—— New York Times Book Review