'[A] dazzling, heartbreaking debut collection . . .With their sensitivity to people's vulnerabilities and failings, and their sharpness of imagery, these fifteen taut tales recall Annie Proulx at her best: salty, wise, droll and keen to share the lessons of a lifetime'
- Guardian
'Gritty, bitter, hard-won, the fifteen stories in this first collection feel a world away from the seeming solipsism of the younger generation of female Irish writers who are conquering the literary world ... Kennedy's voice, and her unforgiving gaze, are electric'
- Sunday Times
'To carve such gilded stories as these from such fathomless gorges of despair would be an accomplishment for an old master, let alone for a relative newbie. Yet Kennedy's spritz of humour, as black as the holes these women are in, elevates her stories from downbeat to transcendent . . . [A] marvellous collection'
- Independent
'Like fifteen novels squeezed between two covers, ready to blow your mind. The only other writer I can think of who packs this much moving, terrible life into each story is Alice Munro'
- Emma Donoghue
'I am haunted by these unforgettable short stories and believed every single line of every one of them. Louise Kennedy is a very major talent'
- Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times
'[A] dark, funny, brilliantly downbeat Irish debut. Bitterness, beauty and a caustic wit colour Kennedy's stories, as the past makes itself unforgettably present in the lives of her vividly drawn characters'
- Daily Mail