A pervading atmosphere of melancholy, mists and rural isolation: it is this that gives the collection its powerful sense of coherence and unity … Although the story is comfortless, there is an imaginative richness to the account of the long night these lost souls spend together … The All Saints' Day Lovers is testimony to the early, dark brilliance of Vásquez' writing

Sunday Times

Brilliant South American writer … Vásquez has a wonderful eye for the ironies, lies and betrayals of love

The Times

Beyond the simple pleasure of a well-wrought tragedy, it offers a sustained meditation on the lingering power of the unlived life – the road not taken – over the life we actually live. It's a powerful story

Guardian

I fell under his spell. There is no better word because the effect he manages to create, and the world that he evokes, feels little short of spellbinding … What marks out this collection is not merely the maturity of Vásquez's insights, and his ability to look at people more closely than they have ever looked at themselves, but the shaping force of his literary personality, which lies upon them all. He has a signature as bold and distinctive as a painter's, and once you have read one, you feel you would know his writing anywhere

Glasgow Herald

Behind this action lurks a powerful, and subtle, emotional load … In all these stories, the author employs apparently unconnected threads that eventually coalesce to great effect … The All Saints' Day Lovers is nevertheless a forceful reminder that even in the quietest of backwaters – and they don't come much quieter than the Ardennes region in which most of these tales are set – cruelty and estrangement will have their say. This is a very readable, disturbing and entertaining look at how even the maturest of adults are capable of making an unholy mess of their lives – and those of others

Times Literary Supplement