An <b>eloquent</b>, <b>subtle</b>, <b>poetic </b>exploration of what words are and what they do to us. <b>Enchanting</b>, <b>devastating</b>, <b>genius</b>
- Helen Dunmore, * The Times *
Has one of the funniest opening pages Spark has ever written and it's full of her incomparable humour
* Evening Standard *
<b>Delightful</b>, laced with<b> wry and witty </b>observations. <b>A rich satire</b>
* Daily Mail *
My admiration for Spark's contribution to world literature knows no bounds. She was peerless, sparkling, inventive and intelligent - the crème de la crème
- IAN RANKIN,
This is a work, as usual, of <b>glittering Sparkian ice</b>, whose thinly frozen surface tempts you to jump up and down jovially above something deeper and darker . . . One wonders at the <b>simplicity and the intricacy of the plot</b>, <b>blowaway as gossamer </b>. . . One <b>marvels </b>too at the <b>under-surface play of spiritual light and dark</b> . . . One of her funniest novels . . . <b>Spark at her sharpest, her purest </b>and her most merciful
- Ali Smith,
Muriel Spark's novels linger in the mind as brilliant shards, decisive as a smashed glass is decisive
- JOHN UPDIKE, * New Yorker *
The care with which she uses words is matched by a gloriously carefree attitude. It's all part of her sanity, her breezy authorial self-confidence; and because of this I think that reading a blast of her prose every morning is a far more restorative way to start a day than a shot of espresso
* Daily Telegraph *
A wholly original presence in modern literature
- ANDREW MOTION,
A profoundly serious comic writer whose wit advances, never undermines or diminishes, her ideas
* New York Times Book Review *
Spark is a natural, a paradigm of that rare sort of artist from whom work of the highest quality flows as elementally as current through a circuit
* New Yorker *
She has a receptive and wholly distinctive genius
- A N WILSON, * Spectator *