Quiet Dell

In a brilliant fusion of fact and fiction, Jayne Anne Phillips has written the novel of the year… A compulsively readable story * Stephen King *
Superb… A brilliant, beautiful novel * Sunday Times *
Absorbing and captivating * Guardian *
Quiet Dell has all the elements of a murder mystery, but its emotional scope is larger and more complex. It combines a strange hypnotic and poetic power with the sharp tones of documentary evidence. It offers a portrait of rural America in a time of crisis and dramatises the lives of a number of characters who are fascinating and memorable * Colm Tóibín *
An extraordinary book… the best she has written * Observer *
Compelling… Richly imagined… Phillips’ achievement is to reveal how intimately cruelty and kindness unfold * New Yorker *
There is a glowing beauty to the book’s brave, generous version of history * Wall Street Journal *
An extraordinary achievement, a mesmerizing blend of fact and fiction that borrows from the historical record, including trial transcripts and newspaper accounts, but is cloaked in the shimmering language of a poet * Associated Press *
Phillips mesmerizingly spins together fact and fiction, vividly imagining the circumstances leading to their deaths, and sets a young female reporter on the case to solve it * Vanity Fair *
Phillips’ prose is as haunting as the questions she raises about the natures of sin, evil and grace * Kirkus, starred review *
Phillips’ plot is engaging, romantic and fecund; her characters are beautiful, accomplished and good - except for the bad guy, who is very bad indeed * Publishers Weekly *
The truth of all of Phillips’ characterizations is what lies behind this careful novel’s compelling momentum * Booklist *
Phillips’ effort to do justice - aesthetic and moral - to the victims feels bold and honorable… moving, even transporting… Phillips allows her own ample gifts to soar * Boston Globe *
Sometimes eerie and dreamlike, others grippingly tense, yet warmly human, always written with beauty and emotional power, Quiet Dell is a virtuoso performance by a highly original writer * Tampa Bay Times *
Quiet Dell is a smart combination of true crime, history and fiction tied together with Phillips’ seamlessly elegant writing… As the book proceeds to its dark conclusion, Emily offers readers a glimpse of light * Miami Herald *

Jayne Anne Phillips was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia. She is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of six novels, including Night Watch, Quiet Dell, Lark And Termite, MotherKind, Shelter, and Machine Dreams, and two story collections, Fast Lanes, and Black Tickets, a debut that influenced a generation of writers. Twice nominated for the National Book Award, and twice a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, she is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship. Awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction, Phillips is a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. Her work has been translated into twelve languages and has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, The New York Times and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction.

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