This book has the pace of a detective novel, sending fresh blood pulsing through an old tale as Murphy recreates the heartbreaking drama of Van Gogh's loosening grip on reality.
Daily Mail
Murphy's revelations are fascinating and add intriguing details to the great crisis of Van Gogh's life.
Michael Prodger
The Times
Murphy's book rescues the real Van Gogh from the lazy cliches of tea towel memorabilia by painting an electric, nuanced portrait of a man who achieved artistic brilliance despite his mental health issues and not because of them. In doing so, she allows for a version of his history in which her subject's passion for life, art and humanity blooms like the sunflowers he painted.
Daily Mail
She knows Provence with an intimacy that's rare in the ear genre. Her descriptions of the people, their landscape, their customs are unusually detailed... Her second stand-out quality is a doggedness that goes beyond the usual art-historical drives. Relentlessly she wrestles with the book's central mystery.
Waldemar Januszczak
Sunday Times
No one before has built up such a detailed picture of the people who surrounded the great artist.
Martin Gayford
Daily Telegraph