Book Reviews
To have spent a couple of days luxuriating in the shimmering prose of Academy Street was like heaven for me. Though at times Tess Lohan is quiet as a mouse, motherless from an early age, living in fear of her moody, sorrowful father’s wrath, her inner life, even as a child, is rich. READ MORE.
Keddy Ann Outlaw - LitLovers
Costello's concern, in this slim novel traversing seven decades, is to bear witness to the intensity of experience that Tess knows from the inside out…the writing becomes charged with all the strangeness and vitality of her character.
Belinda McKeon - New York Times Book Review
[Costello] has a gift for relating even life's most calamitous events in matter-of-fact prose, and in doing so laying bare their true devastation.… Costello is also a master of storytelling shorthand. She understands that what makes a milestone memorable is not its central ceremony but what happens on the margins.
Maria Crawford - Financial Times
Mary Costello is a very gifted writer and this is a beautifully written novel.
Neil Donnelly - Irish Independent
A remarkable debut with a transcendent, quiet power.
Judges - 2014 Costa First Novel Award
Costello works wonders on the page, employing precise prose to craft a resonant narrative out of a rather ordinary lifetime. Though a fateful incident near the novel’s end feels somewhat exploitative…Tess’s overall story—full of struggles and meekness—proves there is often beauty to be found in the mundane.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Darkly beautiful…. [Recalls] Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.… Costello renders her homely, knowing heroine with craft and compassion in this sad, slim, rich novel.
Kirkus Reviews
Academy Street (Costello) - Book Reviews
Article Index
Page 3 of 4