[Grace] is at her best portraying the lives of her characters, from their daily tasks (eel-fishing and cooking) to the stories they tell-both real hard-luck stories and ancestral myths.... The writing here is often elegant in its simplicity (the first-person sections in particular are beguilingly direct....) and the information about Maori life intriguing.-- "Publishers Weekly"
What I enjoy most about the writing of Patricia Grace is the warmth of feeling, the depth, the aroha; the delight in the quirks of people and the poignancy; the sensitivity of the writing and the poetic quality of her descriptions.-- "Zealandia"