Diving Belles

Lucy Wood Press Reviews

'These stories are brilliantly uncanny: not because of the ghosts and giants and talking birds which haunt their margins, but because of what those unsettling presences mean for the very human characters at their centre ... A startling, and startlingly good, debut' Jon McGregor

'Lucy Wood has an intensity and clarity of expression, deeply rooted in a sense of place. Her stories have a purity and strength, and an underlying human warmth; they resonate in the mind'
Philip Hensher

'Each year, book blurbs tell you that a thousand new writers have fresh, distinctive voices. But fresh, distinctive voices are actually very rare. Lucy Wood has one'
Michel Faber

'These are stories from the places where magic and reality meet. It is as if the Cornish moors and coasts have whispered secrets into Lucy Wood's ears and, in response, she has fashioned exquisite tales of mystery and humanity. In her prose, the fabulous moves across the everyday like the surf moving over the shore, shifting it in subtle measures, leaving it altered in its wake' Ali Shaw, author of The Girl with Glass Feet

'Cornish folklore for the modern day done in a beautiful, spooky way' Harper's Bazaar

'A vibrant new voice Tatler Utterly different in every way from Keret, in their Angela Carter-ish Englishness, but equally compelling' -- Erica Wagner The Times