Evocative … Delicately detailed . .. A touching coming-of-age story, powerfully but gracefully infused with a spirit of place, which also pays tribute to a revered artist.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

It's a haunting, haunted story, full of ghosts and drownings, disappointments and sadness, but there's a quality of luminous wonder too, captured in Freud's delicate, lyrical prose and the tenderness and warmth of her depictions of the various characters that make up village life. But it is Thomas, mysterious Thomas, and brusque, beleaguered Mac, who glow in this compelling story of art, friendship and war.

Independent

Poignant … Mr Mac and Me is perhaps Freud's finest, most heartfelt book, written in shimmering prose – and that's saying something since . . . she was named, alongside Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro, among others, one of Granta's best young British novelists.

Herald