A triumph. Read it at once * * The Times * *
In lucid prose and perfectly measured strides, Grenville lays down her riveting tale. A novel aglow with empathy, its author's capacious visions still deliver an elemental thrill * * Daily Mail * *
A beautifully uplifting piece of fiction * * Independent * *
An original, inviting tale * * Daily Telegraph * *
Genuinely affecting * * Financial Times * *
Grenville's prose is clear and clean, employing a gently leading storytelling style that is especially welcome with a foreign land and a foreign time . . . Grenville has brought imagination and compassion to the source of so much of Australia's retroactive hand-wringing. What distinguishes her portrayal of Aboriginal culture is that for once appreciation, sympathy and admiration get the better of impotent guilt -- Lionel Shriver * * Daily Telegraph * *
Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . writes with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery . . . [and] explores the natural rifts that arise between settlers and native people with a deep understanding of the ambiguities inherent in such conflicts -- Jay Parini * * Guardian * *
A deft historical tale of discovery . . . [Dawes'] qualities shine lambently through Grenville's elegantly calibrated prose . . . The lasting impression of her novel is not of drama, but of a lovely, watchful stillness: a sort of astronomy of the human heart * * Sunday Telegraph * *
A compelling narrative . . . An intelligent, spare, always engrossing imagining of first contact, in which the fictionalisation of history allows a comment about current postcolonial race relationships which escapes the didacticism of special pleading * * Times Literary Supplement * *
In this novel, morally troubling issues of exploitation and hypocrisy carry reverberations well beyond the convincingly portrayed historical moment * * Sunday Telegraph * *
