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‘A rich layering of history and fiction … Erudite, elegant but easy-going … One of the best novels of the year so far’ The Times

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‘Extraordinarily accomplished … absolutely involving, thanks to beautiful description and a very fine understanding of human emotion … Tolstoyan in its sly wit and descriptive brilliance … Humane, thoughtful, compelling and packed with magic, this is a remarkable achievement’ Guardian

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‘So clever and beautifully written, it gripped me from start to end. I abandoned work and family to finish it’ Roddy Doyle

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Unlike anything I’ve read. With its broad scope and its intimacy and exactness, it cuts through the apparatus of life to the vivid moment’ Tessa Hadley

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‘Hughes-Hallett’s ambitious first novel dances between past and present, history and modernity … magically and movingly evoked, and remains in the imagination long after the reader passes beyond its gates’ New Statesman

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‘Ambitious and accomplished … a polyphonic narrative … rich with detail … leaves you hoping that this late conversion to fiction will prove only the beginning’ Observer

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‘A sensual meditation on the nature of paradise’ Mail on Sunday

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‘A teeming, heaving whirligig of a novel… Hughes-Hallett retains terrific control of her subject matter in a novel beautifully alert to the repeating patterns of personal and political history’ Daily Mail

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‘Happy, tragic, ever expanding and literally ground-breaking’ Spectator

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‘Characters to get involved with, stories to follow – perfect to get lost in’ Woman & Home

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‘That rare thing: a fresh classic. Ambitious, satisfying and mature, Peculiar Ground is spellbinding’ Country Life

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‘Richly imagined, impressively detailed … admirably ambitious and well written … original and intriguing’ Sunday Times

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‘Richly evocative’ Tatler

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‘Elegant, inventive, mystical’ Daily Telegraph

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