“Mantel's stories have their own special tang and quidditas. Even as one appreciates the suave authorial style-light pared-down, technically scintillating, like the Olympic gymnast who nails her landing every time-one has the sense too that Mantel is working with some fairly edgy and complex private material in these contemporary fables.... One gets the feeling she wants both to frighten us (at times more than a little) and make us laugh. She's like an old-fashioned spirit -medium of sorts: a brusque, mischievous, Madame Arcati-like purveyor of uncanny moments. She transports us somewhere else. And she seems to be having great fun with it too.... Mantel is such a funny and intelligent and generously untethered writer that part of what one's praise must mean is that if you're intelligent and quirky enough to take the book up at all...she's got quirks enough of her own to match you, if not raise you 10.” —New York Times Book Review

“A new Hilary Mantel book is an Event with a capital 'E'.... Heads always tend to roll - figuratively and otherwise - in Mantel's writing. Hers is a brusque and brutal world leavened with humor - humor that's available in one shade only: black.... makes a permanent dent in a reader's consciousness because of Mantel's striking language and plots twists, as well as the Twilight Zone-type mood she summons up...breathtaking.” —Maureen Corrigan, NPR

“Mantel] evokes a shadowy region where boundaries blur and what might have happened has equal weight with what actually occurred…. Despite the plethora of sharply observed social detail, her short stories always recognize other potential realities…. Even the most straightforward of Mantel's tales retain a faintly otherworldly air.” —Washington Post