Not since J.D. Salinger's <i>For Esme With Love and Squalor</i> have I enjoyed so much a collection of stories. I mean pleasure – real pleasure.
- Paul Durcan, The Cork Examiner
MacLaverty is one of the best practitioners of the genre we have.
New Statesman
His prose is invisible, free of tricks, as though it was your own thoughts.
Observer
Beautifully constructed, minutely observed, filled with the poetry of longing, told with an economy and simplicity which makes their small tragedies even more powerful and moving… MacLaverty has created an imagined Ulster which can stand side by side with Joyce's Dublin. Long may he continue.
Guardian
MacLaverty has a knack for endowing the workaday with a little poetry.
Independent