Barcelona is full of devastating lines . . . Costello is working in the tradition of her literary heroes [Kafka, Musil, Coetzee]: delivering insights which are painful but also energising because of the beauty with which they're captured . . . The most impressive collection I've read in some time
JOHN SELF

The Times

Clear-eyed and provocative, bruised and bruising: these are the stories of a writer at the very top of her game
EIMEAR McBRIDE It is rare that a writer of fiction can evoke such depth of feeling and visceral/moral revulsion as Mary Costello . . . in stories dealing with cruelty to animals, especially the slaughter of farm animals; rare that marital intimacy is so powerfully rendered
JOYCE CAROL OATES Costello's writing is insistent, precise and unsparing. Everyday acts and ordinary lives are infused with a sense of the skull beneath the skin and of a catastrophe held tautly at bay

Observer

Beautiful, quietly shattering . . . haunting, powerful stories . . . Costello explores the violence behind painful silences in domestic life . . . Amid complex chains of cruelty, Costello offers transcendent moments of completeness
EMILY RHODES

Guardian

[Costello is] a writer concerned with big issues of freedom, responsibility, power, inequality and suffering . . . A consistently elegant writer . . . One of the hallmarks of [her] writing is her ability to get up close to unpalatable truths and politely ask that the reader not look away

Irish Times

There are memorable stories . . . [Costello] reflects on the world around her, examining its shortcomings with a forensic eye . . . A strong contender as the finest practitioner of the Joycean short story

Irish Independent

Spare, unflinching . . . These elegant, emotionally complex stories are not comfortable or comforting to read, but they are beautifully, bruisingly honest

Daily Mail

The characters in these stories yearn for connection, to be understood. Mary Costello shows how a fleeting insight or incident can transform a life completely and how the secret self determines our actions for better or worse. Gorgeously written provocative and brave
GABRIEL BYRNE Praise for Mary Costello: With extraordinary devotion, Mary Costello brings to life a woman who would otherwise have faded into oblivion
J. M. COETZEE