Minds of Winter is a remarkable feat of imagination, empathy, and research. Past and present merge to convey the polar landscape's immense mysteries, and the lives of those voyagers compelled to seek answers in its icy expanses. Ed O'Loughlin is a skilled cartographer of both the Arctic and the human heart. What a magnificent novel. -- Ron Rash
A spellbinding tale of adventures and explorers, spies and outlaws, of derring-do, self-sacrifice and impossible feats of endurance . . . In the sheer brio of its storytelling, it brings to mind Salman Rushdie's The Enchantress of Florence or David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas - profound, yes, but terrific fun, too. * Irish Examiner *
In both concept and execution the novel is a serious piece of work at once vastly entertaining and ambitious. * Sunday Times *
A compelling and hugely ambitious novel. * Mail on Sunday *
The Franklin novel to end all Franklin novels. Never have so many different narrative threads been taken up and twined together. * Arctic Book Review *
With each novel, O'Loughlin is expanding his interests and his imaginative grasp - the first sign of a genuinely talented writer. He is rapidly becoming one of the most interesting novelists currently at work. * Sunday Business Post *
[A] brilliant paean to the obsessions of the polar explorers . . . stupendously good. * Australian *
A novel wondrous in its tone and reach . . . the final pages seem inevitable as great endings must, the whole novel wondrous in its tone and reach. The title is from Wallace Stevens poem The Snowman, where we're asked to behold the 'Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.' It takes a good writer to take that on. It takes a great one to succeed. -- Eoin McNamee * Irish Times *
An imaginative and involving story. * Choice Magazine *
The most exciting first novel I have read in many years. -- Anne Enright, on Not Untrue and Not Unkind
A simply brilliant debut by an author of great poise and power. -- Tim Butcher, on Not Untrue and Not Unkind
Intensely evocative language. * New York Times *
A graceful writer. * Guardian *
Superb. * The Times *
Eloquent and thoughtful. * Times Literary Supplement *
