Like Jennifer Johnston's previous distinguished fiction, THIS IS NOT A NOVEL packs a whole world and its history into a few spare pages... subtle, moving and beautifully constructed - Peter Parker, The Sunday Times
An elegant, elegiac exploration of love, loss, memory, and longing... There is no more careful, sensitive, powerful storyteller helping us to [look freshly at the past] than Jennifer Johnston - Cole Morton, Independent on Sunday
Of course it is a novel and a very good, beautifully structured one... The skill with which Johnston moves through the decades... and... alternates points of view is remarkable... The characterisation is deft and convincing. - Allan Massie, Scotsman
An enthralling book, about abandonment and yearning. Elegantly and sparely written, it resonates with the plangent echoes of past betrayals, guilt and madness - Glasgow Herald
A fine drama of family relations, chiselled from the bedrock of 20th-century Irish history and touched with ... eloquence... the elegant treatment of theme is what Johnston's readers will appreciate - Irish Times
Elegantly crafted and written with the economy and clarity of one long practised in her art - Sunday Telegraph
The ingenious working of the material and its moving nature will... delight Johnston's admirers... New readers may well return for more - TLS
For the first time in my life I can honest