I don't think I've ever read a book as wise, or as moving. It's replete with images that I know will stay with me forever: the red dots; the motorcycling couple; the pink-jacketed U-bahn man; the flung suitcases; the women on the truck; and Lukas's almost ghostly, liminal presence in his own story, as he tries and tries to give coherence to the inchoate; to work his grief and trauma into some kind of resolution. His pain and his yearning lift up from every line, and what lines they are. This is a book of Everything: love, family, home, war, migration, loss; at once and by turns gentle and ferocious, luminous and dark, and ultimately filled with hope. I feel changed by this novel, and I will treasure it forever. * Donal Ryan *
Hugo Hamilton has written a magnificent book. Conversation with the Sea is as compulsive as it is lyrical, deeply moving, utterly readable, bursting with life. The plot is devious and seductive; the prose takes your breath away - it towers over contemporary fiction. A triumph. * Frank McGuinness *