Larks Across The Pond

Impossible Causes was published in America today, on the tail of some cracking reviews and coverage.

Ivy Pochodo chose Impossible Causes for inclusion in the New York Times round-up of thrillers by women. “There has never been a more exciting or challenging time for women who write and read thrillers and crime novels,” she begins, saying of Impossible Causes specifically “…the picture that emerges is an important one, concerning itself with the external governance of women’s bodies, their actions and their fates — a theme not confined to the remote Lark.”

I was honoured to be interviewed by publishing legend Neil Nymen for BookTrib in the run up to publication. Neil described the book thus: “Impossible Causes is a haunting work, filled with explorations into the power of lies, the consequences of silence, and the intensity that can envelop the relationships between teenage girls – a book that feels at once timeless and very modern.” You can read my answers to his thoughful questions here.

Elena Hartwell found much to praise in her review for The New York Journal of Books, saying, “Impossible Causes dwells on beautiful language like a literary mystery, while simultaneously crafting a complex web of time, place, and character.”

Crime Reads featured the book in their Five Psychological Thrillers to Read In November, and commissioned me to write an essay to mark Impossible Causes’ US publication. My take on how the tarot can steer a narrative is here.

Other great reviews came from Kirkus, Publisher’s Weekly and Booklist – all the highlights, along with a digest of the UK reviews, are on the book’s main page of my website – but let me give one last mention to possibly my favourite of the US reviews, from Jay Strafford at the Free-Lance Star in Fredericksburg, whose opinion ends on this note: “Call her novel strange. Call it unsettling. But also call it mesmerizing.”

Now, I’m off to consult the cards to find out just how the book will fare with readers across the pond…