The Springs of Affection

Brennan is, for a new generation of Irish women writers, a casualty of old wars not yet won. The prose holds her revived reputation very well, especially the Irish stories. These feel transparently modern, the way that Dubliners by Joyce feels modern. It is partly a question of restraint... Brennan remains precise, unyielding: something lovely and unbearable is happening on the page.

– Anne Enright