A deftly woven novel, which I think will astonish you

Bella Mackie, Women's Prize for Fiction 2023, judges comments

Sometimes you don't need to reinvent the wheel. This is an unashamedly conventional realist novel, but such an exceptional one that it's bound to rekindle even the most cynical reader's appreciation of the form . . . Spellbindingly, heartbreakingly unforgettable

Daily Mail, Books of the Year

Not many novels mix juicy romance and wartime violence. War-induced longing is a common fictional occurrence – consider Michael Ondaatje's The English Patient, Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong, or, to a lesser degree, Ian McEwan's Atonement – but a vivid, sexy, not-doomed-feeling love story that also takes a war zone as a central subject rather than simply a setting is rarer

Atlantic

A first novel that reads nothing like one, this is a tender, fiercely beautiful story . . . Every finely grooved detail here feels authentic'

Sunday Times, Books of the Year

Hands down the best book this year was Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. There has been praise for Kennedy's eye in recreating the Belfast of the mid-70s, but it is the precision of the emotional detail that holds the readers attention: after a while, you forget to exhale

Anne Enright, Irish Times, Books of the Year

We know that civil wars are made up of thousands of small tragedies. But I know few novels that convey the grim predictability of everyday violence during that period so well. Kennedy's careful attention is a welcome counter to Brexit's careless disregard of lives and loves lost

New Statesman, Books of the Year