The Other Side of the Bridge

A subtly-wrought affair of complex relationships, hard times and shocking events

Independent

Beautifully observed with characters who are all realistically flawed

Scotland on Sunday

Eloquent, thoughtful book...not only has Lawson fulfilled the promise of her first novel, she has surpassed it in a layered, complex story about emotional power shifts. Storytelling, not showmanship, dictates the honest, serious art of Mary Lawson

Irish Times

Like the great 19th-century novelists of provincial life, Mary Lawson is fluent in the desperate intensity of the small, individual dramas of respectable people - and she paints an eloquent picture

Sunday Telegraph

Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town

The Times

Lawson's measured prose is good at communicating the warp and weft of communal life... Lawson's quiet artistry has many virtues

Sunday Times

A beautiful read, on every level

Independent on Sunday

This is a fine book - an enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate

Guardian

Discreetly powerful

Daily Telegraph

Lawson's gifts are enormous, especially her ability to write a literary work in a popular style. Her dialogue has perfect pitch, yet I've never read anyone better at articulating silence. Best of all, Lawson creates the most quotable images in Canadian literature

Toronto Star

I could not put it down, but perhaps better to say that I could not let it go or that it would not let me go... Lawson transported me into a place that I know does not exist by taking me deep down into the story of a family whose fate is inexorable and universal. Her reality became mine

Globe and Mail

[Lawson] returns to several of the themes that marked her brilliantly successful first novel, Crow Lake... Lawson's cornucopia of novelistic gifts, even more bounteously on display in her second book, includes handsome, satisfying sentences, vivid descriptions of physical work and landscape and an almost fiendish efficiency in building the feeling that something very bad is about to happen

National Post

An engrossing period piece...vivid evocation of setting and characters

Observer

A decent, sober, well-made novel

Guardian

Tragic and haunting - get the Kleenex for the final page

Daily Express