The New York Times Book Review - Jean Zimmerman
As the butcher's daughter reflects on all she sees, Glendinning makes this tale exhilarating, lending Agnes a candid, eccentrically lyrical voice.
The Daily Mail
An absolute pleasure . . . assured, quietly gripping, surprising and educative, with a terrific central character, it pins down the precarious nature of life in 16th-century England.
The Times
Glendinning writes with a vivid immediacy about a fascinating, dark moment . . . This is the underside of Henry’s religious Reformation… a refreshing and original tale.
Mirabile Dictu
I have begunThe Butcher’s Daughterand am swept away by the elegant prose. Will Glendinning give Hilary Mantel a run for the money?”
Foreword Reviews (starred review)
Unabashedly feminist . . . elegant, intelligent, compulsively entertaining . . . [The Butcher’s Daughter] demonstrates the power of individualswith inner strength and determination to work for change when able to choose a life of their own design.
Booklist
Psychologically astute ... and evincing deep knowledge of Tudor-era society. Glendinning thoughtfully explores womanhood's many facets.
Jessie Childs
A beguiling, affecting tale of dissolution and redemption set in a changing–and beautifully wrought–Tudor landscape. Gloriously authentic and refreshingly unromantic, this one got under my skin.
Carol McGrath
An elegant, beautifully written ode to the resilience of the human spirit, and a poignant meditation on time and change. As lucent and intricately-detailed as a stained glass window.
Margaret George
An immersive, engrossing, and epic journey of a woman's soul, finely researched and beautifully written.
Fay Weldon
A brave girl, a powerful tale, a world on the brink of change– and how the past leaps into life!
Literary Hub
In this well-researched historical novel, a woman goes from dishonored farm girl to powerful nun in a prosperous abbey, and gets involved in palace intrigue against the backdrop of the reformation.
New York Journal of Books
A richly textured chronicle . . . [with]well written with wonderfully rendered descriptions of place and period and an evocative mix of fiction and fact.The author has created an interesting and observantnarrator whose actions and reflections are consistent with her circumstances and the period in which the story takes place. . . .In a world ruled by men cowed before a fickle tyrant, Agnes’s decisions are not only pragmatic but authentic to her time and place which, after all, has to be the guiding principle for historically based fiction.
The New York Times Book Review
Glendinning makes this tale exhilarating, lending Agnes a candid, eccentrically lyrical voice.
