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“There is something very rare and special about Vickers
as a novelist. In exploring the connections between faith and
imagination, art and redemption, religion and science in an
intelligent, unusual but very readable way, she manages to touch
something buried deep in all of us. It gives her work a quietly
compelling quality”
Peter Stanford, The Independent
“Love and pain, death and life, self-kowledge and insensibility
- all these big, vital themes converge in this moving, utterly
engrossing new novel by Salley Vickers”
Elena Seymenliyska, Guardian
“Vickers, a former analyst, is interesting on the blurred
boundaries between the healer and the damaged…Equally
compelling are the meditations on love. There is something
particularly affecting about the central pair’s restraint”
Alex Clark, Observer
“The writing is so good and the structure so skilful
that she manages to make delicate and difficult notions vivid.
Her territory is the faultline along which memories of loss
are experienced by an individual both as integral to their
identity and as constraints on their engagements with the
present. This may be true of a great deal of fiction, but
it is rare for a novel to present itself so directly and with
such success”
John de Falbe, The Spectator
“In some ways, Vickers is a traditional romantic novelist
– but a literary one: an erudite writer clearly aware
of the central traditions of English Literature and of Christianity.
She is not a writer’s writer…but a reader’s
writer concerned with telling a story and with making a handful
of carefully constructed characters matter”
Carol Ann Duffy, Daily Telegraph
“The Lives of the characters in this gently absorbing
novel continue to resonate with the failures, possibilities,
regrets and redemptions – consoled and mirrored by art
– that we all endure.”
Carol Ann Duffy, Daily Telegraph
“The Other Side of You is a brave and unusual book,
a gripping read that offers the tantalizations and rewards
of a whodunit”
Pamela Norris, Literary Review
“A fine and multi-layered novel”
Ross Gilfillan, Daily Mail
“The evocation of place, and the pervading sense of
sadness, are skillfully created, and the flawed humanity and
depth of feeling of the characters are compelling”
Kate Salter, Times Literary Supplement
“Her prose flows effortlessly, carrying the reader
along on a gentle stream of consciousness, while the character
of David McBride is so intricately crafted we feel we know
him better than he knows himself”
Ilone Amos, Scotland on Sunday
“An eminently readable book and sure to become a favourite
with the same book group audience that made her first novel,
Miss Garnett’s Angel, a runaway success”
Elaine Moore, Financial Times
“The great upheavals caused by love and its attendant
emotions carry the book through. After all the tempestuous
voyages of the soul, a consolation is offered: if the injuries
suffered at the hands of a volatile love may sometimes be
of a terminal nature, there is another type of love that heals”
Pete Clark, Evening Standard & The Scotsman
“This slow-burning novel wraps itself around you, while
questioning the nature of love and the redemptive power of
art.”
Fanny Blake, Woman & Home
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