The plotting of the novel is cunning, the performance immaculate... The management and pacing of this material are masterly... He has produced a vital, driven and necessary book

Niall Griffiths is in complete command of his material... A hymn both ancient and modern to place and to unsentimental belonging

A powerful blend of expletive-ridden dialogue and passages of beautiful prose- quite brilliant

A fabulous piece of writing... One of the new millennium's most striking novels to date

The power of Griffiths's language is astounding, steeped in the wild forces of nature that have helped make Ianto what he is, by turns lyrically beautiful and tumultuously violent

'The excitement and disquiet gained spectacular, page-turning momentum...There are many highlights in Nicoll's sweeping and assured narrative...but the real star of White Male Heart is the Highlands...it is his supreme gift that he pulls this off on the page. He creates a backdrop so vivid that it becomes integral to the action...Meaty stuff indeed'

'An explosively violent début...Nicoll reveals himself every bit as much a natural-born writer...lighting the fuses for his Highland Götterdämmerung'

'At once both brutal and beautiful...White Male Heart owes an obvious debt to Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory and a less obvious one to Andrew Greig's Electric Brae, both also remarkable debut novels by Scottish men, but Ruaridh Nicoll stakes out a corner of the territory that is uniquely his. The quality of the observation is breathtaking ...this is an absorbing and uncomfortable read, raising as many questions as it answers about what it means to be a young man in a territory where the roles are few and growing more limited with every passing year. But White Male Heart has far wider relevance than that. This is a novel that is both heart-rending and heart-stopping but which never loses sight of the importance of the blackest of humour. It is without question a welcome and worthy addition to the growing sub-genre of tartan noir'