‘A work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding . . . the writing sparkles with Grenville’s gift for transcendently clear imagery’
Guardian

‘Brings readers into intimate acquaintance with the lives of women in late 19th- and early 20th-century rural Australia . . . elevated by Grenville's crystalline prose’
Globe and Mail        

Praise for Kate Grenville:

‘Beautifully written, insistently eloquent and expressive of connection . . . [a] stunning literary achievement’
Guardian        

‘Kate Grenville spins a delicately teasing novel about the inherent untrustworthiness of the official record . . . beautiful and subtle’
Financial Times        

‘Grenville cleverly uses Elizabeth’s bland and pleasant missives home, showing that they were a carefully constructed fiction. The real Elizabeth — passionate, clever and endlessly resilient — is brilliantly conjured’
The Times        

‘Kate Grenville gives voice to this reticent woman, allowing her smart, sparky, shrewd heroine a chance “at last to speak” . . . eloquent [and] evocative’
Daily Mail