‘Magnificently sad and funny...the best skewering of life between the sexes since Mary McCarthy’s “The Group.’—Boston Globe ('Best Books of 2015')
‘Harrower’s prose is watchful, witty, unillusioned, exultant. Its healthful vitality – vivid, accurate, alive to irony – is a dashing stand against its subject matter: human perversity, so often squalid, senseless, swallowing all meaning. The reader marvels at its balance, its sinuousness, as each fresh wave hits….There is a note of elegy in all of Harrower’s work, even as the adrenaline flows, and a lyricism reminiscent of F.Scott Fitzgerald at his desperate best.’—Times Literary Supplement
‘In Certain Circles is subtle yet wounding, and very much alive.’—Guardian
‘Harrower can pierce your heart.’—Michael Dirda, Washington Post
‘With its flavor of Henry James, Harrower’s rediscovered story is an odd, brittle yet impressive piece of work that exposes the complex passions beneath a drawing-room-scenario surface.’—Kirkus Reviews
‘A stark, uncompromising drama of marital imprisonment and psychological manipulation. In its atmosphere of dread and compulsion it has elements of Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic suspense novels. But Ms. Harrower’s fearsome objectivity and her bristling, beautiful prose come from modernist masters like Katherine Mansfield and Elizabeth Bowen.’ Wall St Journal
‘Harrower was right about In Certain Circles being well written, but surely wrong to take its superb style for granted, as if mere literary muscle memory. Like the rest of her work, the novel is severely achieved: the coolly exact prose cannot be distinguished from the ashen exhaustion of its tragic fires…The book belongs with her best work, with The Watch Tower and The Long Prospect…[It] is more explicit than Harrower’s earlier work about ideological tensions between men and women. It is also broader in scope and not as angry—wiser and less hopeless.’ James Wood, New Yorker
‘Harrower evokes the waste and futility of a decadent class with all the bite and poignancy of F Scott Fitzgerald.’ Eimear McBride, New Statesman
‘In Certain Circles [is] a pin-sharp psychological drama about two pairs of siblings, set on the shores of Sydney Harbour. Harrower’s searing, spare prose is breathtaking, as is her depiction of dashed promise and the gulf between the sexes.’ Di Speirs, BBC Radio Books Editor
‘For me, the great discovery of 2014 was the work of Elizabeth Harrower.’ Favourite Books of 2014, New Yorker
‘Elizabeth Harrower’s unpublished In Certain Circles finally gets its moment in the sun, and it’s been well worth the wait.’ Australian Financial Review
‘A coup…weirdly thrilling line by line…[its] dense and adult conversation crackles with a sense of moral urgency.’ Australian
‘Her insights into the nature of love, the role of women and the torsions of power in even the most ordinary relationship are bitter and sometimes cruel, wielded in the way that acute honesty may be, like a whip. Yet they are always delivered via the honeyed dipper of her prose.’ The Monthly
‘A novel of astonishing psychological insight exploring the darker aspects of human attraction.’ Saturday Paper
‘Reading In Certain Circles gave me the thrill that only comes from the work of a major novelist.’ The Conversation
‘A brilliant exploration of relationships, marriage, thwarted passion and the beauty and the price of love.’ Herald Sun
‘There are many wonderful things in this novel. Harrower’s skill in evoking a place is impressive. Her eye for oddities of behaviour, for quirks of character and for patches of pretentiousness is as sure as ever. The wry intelligence of her view of middle-class Australian life is evident throughout. Her writing is characteristically sharp and pithy. Whatever the reason behind her decision not to allow this novel to be released four decades ago, its rebirth is an event to be celebrated.’ Sydney Morning Herald
