'This is a rare book, and rare in its own time. It is memoir, history, fiction, a documenting of filial gratitude and ingratitude, and a record of the cauldron of experience of a near-fatal illness, all bundled, coherently - that's the miracle - between covers. And written with a white intensity that assaults the way a Southern Ocean breaker does- first, shock, then - exhilaration...The paradox of this intensely personal, powerfully intelligent memoir is that it lets the reader through while leaving Clendinnen and the people she anatomises with their skins on and mystery intact...I am reminded of Sylvia Plath's last poems, not because Clendinnen is derivative - she is indelibly herself - but because she, too, can extrude clarity out of chaos.' - Morag Fraser, Age