The High Places: Winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2017 - Couverture rigide

McFarlane has a gift for cutting into a story at precisely the right angle . . . Her writing is skilled; her point of view is unique. (Kate Saunders The Times)

Deliciously unsettling, [McFarlane's] characters act and react in unexpected ways, taking both reader and themselves by surprise. (Lucy Scholes The Observer)

In her distinct and unusual voice - the disconcerting tone and dry humour are reminiscent of Margaret Atwood or Valerie Martin - McFarlane examines relationships with uncomfortable clarity and insight, observing the subtext of human behaviour while acknowledging a mysterious power behind the reality we think we know. (Imogen Lycett Green Daily Mail)

Like a fascinating box of brightly coloured, faintly surreal toys (Phil Baker Sunday Times)

A terrific collection . . . a baker's dozen of powerful stories (Jackie McGlone The Herald (Glasgow))

While the stories in THE HIGH PLACES are imaginative, playful, and intellectually sophisticated, it is no overstatement to suggest that their power resides in the authority of McFarlane's style, not just in her ideas. McFarlane's sentences fizz with imagery . . . The resultant voice is difficult to parse - highly assured, comic but kind, an effervescent admixture of fable, magic realism, and irony . . . [a] remarkable collection. (Australian Book Review)

Superb . . . It's not just that McFarlane's descriptions are beautiful prose, though they are. THE HIGH PLACES is more deliberate than that, and more intelligent. McFarlane strikes an emotional note on every page, whether it be humour or nostalgia or discomfort or joy . . . Nothing is forced and the reason I can't pick my favourite is that every one of the 13 stories is a winner. (The Saturday Paper)

While lesser writers use similes to render descriptions more vivid, McFarlane's heighten aspects of her characters and advance her plots. (Christopher Benfey The New York Times Book Review)

McFarlane writes with a deceptively plain hand, and her style gives shape to the unanswered questions of how well we can ever know each other or ourselves . . . The writing is clever and skilful in spades (Kirkus Reviews)

Praise for The Night Guest

'[A] glittering debut'
Independent

'Horribly believable, The Night Guest is an impressive debut novel that sustains the tense unravelling of its mystery.'
The Sunday Times

'A powerfully distinctive narrative . . . Frida is a fantastic creation'
Guardian

'Beautifully written and psychologically tense . . . extraordinarily accomplished'
Sunday Express

'Disturbs and elevates in equal measure'
Independent on Sunday

'A limpid, beautiful novel'
Daily Mail

'Sometimes a debut novel burns brighter than the rest . . . important and exciting'
Los Angeles Review of Books

'Quiet, unnerving and beautiful . . . It seems to rise above the shiny trivia of the last decade's novels'
Chicago Tribune