A masterpiece. It is seductive, beguiling, lureful - like a mermaid calling us into darker, deeper waters
Scarlett Thomas Lyrical and compelling... entirely original... In Orkney myth slips free from the dust and politesse of the library, and assumes a vivid, dangerous and unparaphraseable existence... Readers will be gripped from start to finish... A beautiful and poignant novel
... Read moreJohn Burnside
Times Literary Supplement
What begins as a familiar, almost fairytale-like narrative ends as something more fragmented, unsettling, and odd... Providing a brooding, bruised, ever-changing backdrop to all this is Orkney, the book's most compelling character of all... Breathtaking
Chitra Ramaswamy
Scotsman
Delicate [and] haunting... With this intense, daring book, Sackville - already a writer of promise - has shown how very good she can be
William Skidelsky
Daily Telegraph
Poetic, dreamlike and beautifully written
Kate Saunders
The Times
Its dreamlike ambiguity is heightened by Sackville's poetic sensibility... Orkney is a haunting tale of longing and possessiveness that puts one in mind of the great literary studies of obsession
Alastair Mabbott
Herald
The prose is rich with marine imagery, and there's a haunting atmosphere of mystery and melancholy
Brandon Robshaw
Independent on Sunday
Sackville is one of the UK's most exciting new writers... She is a genius with her turn of phrase: deft, evocative and clever... Truly remarkable
Lizzie Pook
Stylist
The eerily gifted Amy Sackville bring[s] mysteries to bear on the Scottish archipelago in her second novel, Orkney
Boyd Tonkin
Independent
Sackville's second novel is strangely beautiful and absolutely beguiling, full of magical turns of phrase... It is a masterful depiction of the treacherous waters of desire
Rebecca Morrison
Independent
Intelligent, unsettling and replete with deep dark adult magic... a joy to read
Bidisha Sackville clearly has a gift for the poetic, writing beautifully of everything she touches upon
Francesca Angelina
Sunday Times
Poetic, lyrical, lush in texture... Orkney has power
Holly Williams
Independent on Sunday
A lilting, flowing narrative suggestive of sea rhythms... Intelligent and evocative
Theresa Munoz
Sunday Herald
In [Sackville's] adept hands this lyrical tale of a honeymooning professor and his enigmatic young bride brings the murky maritime beauty of the remote Scottish Archipelago to life
Vogue
A haunting novel set on a beautifully described remote island of Orkney... It's like a folk ballad, full of otherworldly emotion and strange impulses
Eithne Farry
Marie Claire
Sackville writes like a dream (in all senses), conveying both the uncanny power of love and the inscrutable heartbreak of loss
Kirkus Reviews
The intense beauty of the language beguiles the reader with its lilting poetic rhythms and we can hear the constant ebb and flow of the sea... Sackville is a great literary talent, one to watch in the future
Bookmunch
Sackville has written a rich and rhythmic book of enchantment, a book possessed and of possession... Remarkable
Words of Mercury
Sackville manages to capture something genuinely interesting about romance: that you can fall in love with someone without having a clue who they really are
Thomas Quinn
Big Issue
Beautiful descriptive prose
Northern Echo
A remarkable achievement
Desperate Reader blog
The great power of the novel is its lyricism, which gives the bleak and inhospitable landscape an air of enchantment
Eli Davies
Review 31
The foreboding atmosphere that Sackville's prose creates is a joy
Gemma Kappala-Ramsamy
Observer
As lovely as it is unsettling, a brooding, hypnotic novel that draws upon a panoply of folklore to tell a modern tale of love and obsession... Entrancing, intelligent, and as consuming as the obsessions it explores, [this] is a novel to dive into with a lungful of breath
Bookslut
[With] prose that can feel like poetry, [this] is very much a book for language-lovers... Sackville spins a beautiful web
Weekly Standard
Her prose shimmers. This reviewer would be consumed by envy were her books not such an absolute pleasure to read
Country Life
A troubling, deeply romantic tale of the difference between the feverish illusion of love and its more humdrum reality
Belfast Telegraph
Masterfully self-contained... Sackville's rare gift is for rendering the ordinary so distinctly that it becomes fantastic... the prose is so compelling one does not read to find out what happens, but to find out how it will be described
Hannah Tennant-Moore
New York Times
Poetic, dreamlike and beautifully written
Kate Saunders
The Times
Deeply poetic and fanciful
Emma Hagerstadt
Independent
Exquisite
Sunday Mail (Glasgow)
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