Grenville has emerged not only as the truth-teller but also something of a hero . . . her novels are important quests that go beyond art

* Irish Times *

It will wrench your heart

* Guardian *

Kate Grenville is one of Australia's finest writers . . . her great skill as a writer is to take the barest of biographical details and spin them into something of intricate moral complexity

* Telegraph *

Grenville inhabits characters with a rare completeness . . . She writes with a poet's sense of rhythm and imagery

* Guardian *

I will thrilled to find myslf back beside the river I'd come to know so well in The Secret River. The power with which Kate Grenville evokes places and people is so remarkable that I could remember the smell of the air there - and it was no surprise to discover that Sarah Thornhill's story is gripping and illuminating as her father's was

- Diana Athill,

Both brilliant fiction and illuminating personal history

* Independent *

This is a novel that stands by itself and that will be treasured, I'm sure, by generations to come. It is that rare book that manages to wholly engage both head and heart, and it's a long time since I've been quite so sorry to say goodbye to a character at the end of a book as I was saying goodbye to Sarah

* Weekend Australian *

Sarah Thornhill is the book of a writer of the first rank and there are plenty of things in it that are powerfully realised and that touch the heart. . . she is a gift of a writer. . . a haunting performance

* Age *

If you read just one Australian novel this year, make it this one. Sarah Thornhill is a powerful story simply told

* Melbourne Weekly *