Reviews

'Streamlined, strong and remarkably lovely . . . Reading GILGAMESH is like watching a magician who can do many things rapidly, expertly and all at once.' Francine Prose, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

'Joan London writes with a keen sense of epic, her story unfolding across three continents as the Second World War rages. Her real triumph, however, lies in the unhurried and measured delivery . . . An affecting and beautifully written novel.' James O'Brien, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'GILGAMESH is written in the spare, unhurried style of modern masters such as Raymond Carver . . . readers will finish it feeling that they are holding in their hands something rare and precious.' Ned Denney, DAILY MAIL

'GILGAMESH was a bestseller in Australia and has been published to great acclaim both here and in the US. You can see why, with its sleek storyline, its sharp, glittering narrative fragments, its carefully honed sentences, its heroic women and its shadowy men, its spanning of generations and continents, its epic allusions, its sense of the sublime, its love story in a time of war. But what I love most is its ragged and eccentric itinerary, which captures the romance of wanderlust like no other novel I have read.' Maureen Freely, THE GUARDIAN UK

'Bold and beautiful . . . [An] astonishing saga . . . A woman as epic hero? It's high time.' Cathleen Medwick, O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE

'Compelling . . . Personal strife and global perils combine to make GILGAMESH a remarkable study of a young woman's most literal rite of passage, growing up, taking control of her life and refusing to be content with the narrowly conscripted world she has always known.' Judith M. Redding, THE BALTIMORE SUN

'GILGAMESH is a quiet stunner of a book about growing up, leaving home and finding our way back.' Colleen Kelly Warren, THE ST LOUIS DISPATCH

'Riveting in its strangeness and immediacy, evoking with stark power a world almost inconceivably isolated and remote. . . . London's stark prose and command of a wonderfully maintained brooding atmosphere, however, make this an advent to remember.' PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

'Explores numerous themes, including friendship, loyalty, mental illness, and the role of mourning in daily life . . . London writes with power, vision, and poignancy. Highly recommended.' Eleanor J. Bader, LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)

'A small masterpiece. Beautifully balanced and restrained, it is a journey in itself.' GOOD READING

'Written in a wonderfully economical prose, alternatively bristling and resonating with suggestiveness.' Stephanie Trigg, AUSTRALIAN BOOK REVIEW

'London writes with a deft, poetic economy that makes every page sharp and of interest.' Amanda Lohrey, AGE (Australia)