Review
‘There is something rare and special about Vickers as a novelist. In exploring the connections between faith and imagination, art and redemption, religion and science in an intelligent, unusual but very readable way, she manages to touch something buried deep in all of us. It gives her work a quietly compelling quality.’ Peter Stanford, Independent
‘Kindred spirits and soul-mates are at the heart of Salley Vickers’ new novel set in a South Coast psychiatric institution and in Rome…This is a fine and multi-layered novel which suggests that suffering is necessary and that opportunities for happiness should be taken whenever offered.’ Daily Mail
‘Compelling.’ Alex Clark, Observer
‘Ferociously readable.’ Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph
‘Love and pain, death and life, self-knowledge and insensibility – all these big, vital themes converge in this moving, utterly engrossing novel.’ Guardian
‘The lives of the characters in this gently absorbing novel continue to resonate with the failures, possibilities, regrets and redemptions – consoled and mirrored by art – that we all endure.’ Carol Ann Duffy, Telegraph
