"There is something mysterious and unreachable about this novel, it makes you want to peer behind it somehow. It is rigorous and brave, never allowing the reader to become complacent. It is tragic and erotic and no matter how many times you read it, it eludes your grasp."

"Written after the end of WWI, which upended the globe, but set in 1901 in a provincial town where nothing, nothing, nothing at all can change, this enchanting, witty, shattering, profoundly compassionate fable-like short novel seems to contain all the world’s pain in an iridescent soap-bubble."

"Marie is very very bad which makes her very very interesting and, in fact, endearing. This slender novel is witty and sharp and sexy. It’s a wild ride from New York to Paris to Mexico as Marie tries to find herself, at any cost. Oh what ride it is."

"Marie is very very bad which makes her very very interesting and, in fact, endearing. This slender novel is witty and sharp and sexy. It's a wild ride from New York to Paris to Mexico as Marie tries to find herself, at any cost. Oh what ride it is."

"Here’s a novel of intimate emotion and historical sweep. It tells the twin stories of an Australian doctor’s melancholy love affair and his appalling experience as a war prisoner building the Burma Railway. Most potently, Flanagan makes use of his own father’s real-life biography in telling his story."