It was my first really grown-up book, but it is the book that wrings my heart and I feel I bump into elements of it all my life

A rich, gripping tragedy...narrative energy and emotional intelligence

If I had an imaginary friend, Maggie was it. I loved her, I laughed with her, I agonised about her problems, I cried over her . . . and I still do...George Eliot's understanding of human nature is profound...the greatest British novelist of any age

Maggie's dilemma is one that pervades much of Eliot's writing: the dilemma of head versus heart, the woman's struggle to be taken seriously as an intellect while coping with the demands of uninvited passion... Eliot dealt in human relationships and she was a mistress of the art

Impassioned, dignified and richly humane

His best work yet

Compulsively readable

Roddy Doyle's unsparing examination of a brutal marriage transcends the boundaries of class and nationhood

Paula Spencer may be Doyle's most successful literary creation yet, a tour de force of literary ventriloquism that gives the lie to the old writing workshop canard that a man can't write from the point of view of a woman, let alone in her voice

A complex and intricate portrait of an unlikely, yet likable, heroine