'A remarkably engrossing tale'
- The Mail on Sunday
'This book kept me up half the night - I was unable to put it down, and read it in one spellbound gulp. It is everything a novel should be: compassionate, unpredictable, and questioning. Haven is Donoghue at her strange, unsettling best.'
- Maggie O'Farrell, author of Hamnet
'Brooding, dreamlike . . . it's in descriptions of the physical world that Donoghue's prose soars . . . Likewise, among themes that include isolation and devotion, its ecological warnings are its most resonant.'
- The Observer
'Quietly beautiful . . . And its subject, of course, is a universal one: we're all stuck on this rock, trying to keep hold of simple moral truths while quietly losing our minds. As poor young Trian puts it, in one of his darkest moments: "Even this unbearable life is still sweet."'
- The Guardian
'Donoghue excels in creating not just a world but a worldview that is far removed from our own . . . this is a bold, thoughtful novel.'
- Financial Times
'A beautiful and timely novel about isolation, passion and the conflict between obedience and self-preservation. The island setting and the characters stayed with me long after I finished reading'
- Sarah Moss, author of Ghostwall and Summerwater
'Donoghue wrings unlikely psychodrama from such everyday chores of monastic life as copying a manuscript or building a drystone wall. But if that doesn't grab you, rest assured that the devastating denouement amply repays the reader's patience - and has a thing or two to say about modern-day moral panics, too'
- Daily Mail
'A powerful story, brilliantly imagined.'
- Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
'Haven creates an eerie, meditative atmosphere that should resonate with anyone willing to think deeply about the blessings and costs of devoting one's life to a transcendent cause.'
- The Washington Post
'In 7th C, Ireland, three men set sail to a bird-thick island to find God. EmmaDonoghue combines pressure-cooker intensity + radical isolation, to stunning effect. What is Divine Grace? Purity of soul? Virtue? Not what they think.'
- Margaret Atwood