Reviews and Interviews
Reviews of Kill-Grief
Karen Baston, Birkbeck Early Modern Society:
Caroline Rance’s novel is a tale of addiction set in Chester in 1756. It is also a mystery which allows its story to unfold via flashbacks and cleverly placed clues and references. The first few pages are deceptively simple. You think you are reading something to set the stage while you are enjoying some excellent descriptive passages. But later on you realise that returning to those first few pages and re-reading them would be a very good idea indeed. Read more…
Anne Brooke, Vulpes Libris:
From the very first sentence, this book wraps you round in a coat of darkness, tension, low-life street horror and kick-ass descriptive poetry strong enough to obliterate several countries and still have time for a gin or two. I loved it. Read more…
Elaine Dingsdale, The Bookbag:
The city truly comes alive, with scenes, smells, tastes all being virtually palpable. The city becomes a character in its own right, and Rance’s descriptive scenes are excellent – we literally feel as if we’re walking the rows with Mary… Read more…
Jackie Bailey, Farm Lane Books:
The book follows Mary, a reluctant nurse, who has to deal with the all the bodily functions thrown at her, on top of the secrets she is hiding. Mary is struggling to become independent and is initially over-whelmed by her new life in Chester, as she is used to a very different life by the sea. As the book progresses she gains in confidence and her hidden past is gradually revealed… Read more…
Alannah Tomkins, Senior Lecturer, Keele University:
What would it be like to inhabit a Hogarth print? To smell the gutters, run your hand along the railings and taste the fare of eighteenth-century England? Caroline Rance’s novel jolts the reader into Hogarth’s world with a vengeance – the prison, the sick-bed, and above all the street – and like Hogarth’s characters her heroine progresses from ignorance to awareness. Read more…
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