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“One I wish I’d written myself…Its structure, pace, detail, tone, humanity—it’s a quiet masterpiece.”
— Roddy Doyle, New York Times bestselling author
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“Haunting and heartbreaking…His best yet.”
— Guardian (London)
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“A humane and tender masterpiece.”
— Irish Times (Dublin)
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“Bates narrates the story with precisely the English accent one would imagine in this seemingly quaint village. HIs calm, low-key delivery perfectly sets the mood for the story…Bates has narrated the story to mirror McGregor’s vision.”
— Booklist (audio review)
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“Matt Bates…[is] an excellent choice of narrator for an audiobook that explores the minutiae of how people return to daily life after a tragedy has struck…Listeners will hear a tightly controlled, low-voiced portrayal of inexplicable loss. Fans of literary fiction delivered in the style of radio theater will enjoy the experience.”
— AudioFile
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“Novels aspire to be social documents, group portraits, measurers of time, renovators of the ordinary, but few come close to achieving those ambitions. This entrancing book does.”
— New Yorker
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“[A] gesture toward the sweep of history, reminding us that the struggles that seem so momentous to one group of people will someday be forgotten.”
— New York Times
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“A work of intense, forensic noticing: an unobtrusively experimental, thickly atmospheric portrait of the life of a village.”
— Times Literary Supplement (London)
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“Jon McGregor has revolutionized that most hallowed of mystery plots: the one where some foul deed takes place in a tranquil English village that, by the close of the case, doesn’t feel so tranquil anymore.”
— Washington Post
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“Excels at charting how, over the years, relationships fray, snap, or twine together…McGregor again highlights the remarkable in the everyday.”
— Sunday Times (London)
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“A singular and haunting story.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
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“An atmospheric, meticulously crafted novel, begins like a mystery then quickly morphs into something altogether different.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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“Brilliant…McGregor’s novel’s subtly devastating impact ultimately imparts wisdom about the tenuous and priceless gift of life.”
— Booklist (starred review)
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“McGregor’s writing is extraordinary, and…[a] treatise on timelessness and human nature…Highly recommended.”
— Library Journal (starred review)
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“[A] village that is still haunting me, and which, because of the rich detail of the prose, I feel I’ve lived in before, and for which, on closing the book, I found myself homesick.”
— George Saunders, Booker Prize–winning author