“MOTHERING SUNDAY is, like everything Swift writes, quite unlike anything Swift has written before, and subtly teasing...[it] recommends itself as an antidote to the cloying sentimentalities of Downton. Downstairs was never happy.”——Times
“MOTHERING SUNDAY is a powerful, philosophical and exquisitely observed novel about the lives we lead, and the parallel lives – the parallel stories – we can never know…It may just be Swift’s best novel yet.”——Observer
“A vanished world is resurrected with superb immediacy…Characters are perfectly caught but never flatly pinned down. Fidelity to life, Swift has stressed before, includes recognising that people and events have depths that can remain unknown or only partly glimpsed. MOTHERING SUNDAY makes fine use of this awareness. Wonderfully accomplished, it is an achievement as brilliant as its weather.”——Sunday Times
“A perfect small tragedy with all the spring and tension of a short story…Swift’s small fiction feels like a masterpiece.”
Financial Times “Swift has written a book that is not just his most moving and intricate but his most engrossing too.” ——Guardian
“Swift is an undoubted master of detail and delay, working by a process of meditation and accumulation to create a narrative that carries far more heft than one might assume from its length.”——Independent