Moving, vivid, confronting and bold, What Red Was is an urgent story told beautifully

Subversive and sophisticated… [Rosie Price’s] exploration of sexual violence and class makes for an unforgettable read

Bringing together themes of survival, agency, complicity, self-denial and, ultimately, courage, this assured book is one of the most powerful debuts you’ll ever read.

An incredibly nuanced exploration of the complexities of sexual violence, WHAT RED WAS heralds the arrival of a major new literary talent. This is an important book.

WHAT RED WAS is a gripping novel that shines an unflinching light on trauma and its prismatic impact. A deeply necessary book, elegant and assured even as it burns at the centre with cool, clear-eyed rage.

One of the best books I've ever read about female rage and transgression, and the boundaries of both family and art, shot through with gorgeous prose, wrapped in a thrilling plot. WHAT RED WAS is at once incredibly timely and one for the ages. An assured and stealthily brilliant debut that people will be talking about for a long time

Rosie Price has a dazzling gift for rendering the mechanisms of power and privilege viscerally real--whether that power is as concrete as a hand over a face, or more amorphous, subtle, and difficult to name. With its penetrating insight into the texture of trauma and its enthralling prose, this is a book that succeeds in prying open our cultural moment and laying it bare for scrutiny

[A] conversation-starting novel about love, violence and toxicity from [a] subversive new voice

A confident and provocative debut

Price never takes the obvious route or goes for an easy resolution. A writer to watch

A subversive and sophisticated debut

A powerful read

A provocative read… Brave and hard-hitting

A brave and hard hitting read

This exceptional debut is not for the faint-hearted… An honest account of an escalating situation and a woman’s bravery in speaking out

As a meditation the trauma of rape, Price’s debut is compelling and thought-provoking… the darker the narrative grows, the more brightly Price’s prose glimmers

What Red Was introduces an exciting new voice to fiction… Narratives are cleverly interwoven to create a richly textured whole. The writing is polished, wise and possessed of remarkable emotional intelligence. Price is just 26; I cannot wait to see what she produces next

This debut is incredibly wrought, smartly written and very, very timely… powerful

Impressive

Alcoholism, strained friendship and trauma, as well as the power of storytelling, are all sharply expressed

Feel the sharp edge of Price’s prose… capturing the horrendously common nature of rape…is Price’s greatest accomplishment

A scorching and original read... The story of a young girl whose life is torn apart

An exceptionally accomplished debut novel with strongly drawn characters. It is nuanced, true to life and it will make you burn with rage. Price has not shied away from tackling challenging material here: consent, sexual assault, substance abuse, self-harm and depression are just some of the topics that she deftly examines

Unputdownable... A powerful and haunting tale of friendship, privilege and abuse

This outstanding debut novel explore the aftermath of trauma as well as class, addiction and family dynamics

What Red Was is an impressively successful debut... if you are looking for a gripping yet thought-provoking read which will have you hooked from the first page, look no further than What Red Was

A gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal

A gripping portrait of four young women in South Korea... its focus on the tangled and complicated nature of female friendship is universally familiar and fascinating

Hypnotising... you won't want to put it down until the very last page

You'll find sisterhood at the heart of this ambitious book

Tremain's extraordinary imagination has produced a powerful, unsettling novel in which two worlds and cultures collide

Tremain writes about this part of France so well because she has known it since childhood, and she captures a sensuality in the landscape that is both attractive and eerie... It is an enthralling book about the catastrophic disruption honesty can bring

The novel has all the formal structure of a medieval morality tale, along with its traditional dichotomies: rus and urbe, avarice and asceticism, chastity and lust

Rose Tremain's thrilling Trespass is set in an obsure valley in Southern France... To be read slowly; Tremain's writing is too exquisite to hurry

Timeless but rooted; tangible but otherworldly. Meticulously plotted, with the musty sadness that comes of cleaving to the past, Trespass will reward your reading time

Rose Tremain's novel begins with a scream and barely loosens its grip amid the sumptuously written pages that follow...subtly harnesses the stifling heat and dangerously feral landscape of southern France to unspool a psychologically disconcerting story of family skeletons and outsider tensions

Like a sinister edition of A Place In the Sun directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with the depth and subtlety that make the book far more than a mere thriller