"Sure-handed and captivating."
The Washington Post "Utterly gripping.… This is a quietly brilliant novel, which makes for essential reading."
Guardian "[A] tender, affecting novel.… MacLaverty’s gorgeous prose is tactile and understated… and the poignancy of his story fills the reader with yearning."
Minneapolis Star Tribune "An artist with a subtle feel for the ordinary, MacLaverty’s wry, outstanding novel about the tests that time, age and life impose on love resonates with humanity and emotional intelligence."
Financial Times "[Midwinter Break] is, pretty much, a perfect piece of work. It is paced flawlessly, is lapidary of structure, and is delivered with a purpose and clarity and control that can shut out the noise of the world, of your own heartbeat, even: one of those precious books that, when at last you look up from its pages, you need a moment of re-adjustment, of decompression, so immersive is it.… It is breathtaking writing."
Spectator "Midwinter Break is a touching, hopeful portrait of love’s complexity, written by a master craftsman, from the fullness of his heart."
Irish Times "MacLaverty doesn’t publish novels very often, but when he does they are outstanding."
Sunday Times "An exceptionally good book, beautifully and intelligently written, well worth waiting for.… [MacLaverty] writes with an unfailing and generous sympathy.… Everything rings true."
Scotsman "A quietly powerful elegy that chides two finely wrought characters for not being capable of defining what they value most in life.… Exquisite."
Publishers Weekly "A closely observed, deeply sympathetic rendering of a relationship and the fissures that threaten to wreck it."
Kirkus Reviews