«Superb . . . The writing throughout is crystalline, uncontrived, striking and intelligent. You could call it pure»

Literary Review

«Miller writes like a poet, with a deceptive simplicity - his sentences and images are intense distillations, conjuring the fleeting details of existence with clarity. He is also a very humane writer, whose philosophy is tempered always with an understanding of the flaws and failings of ordinary people . . . Pure defies the ordinary conventions of storytelling, slipping dream-like between lucidity and a kind of abstracted elusiveness . . . As Miller proves with this dazzling novel, it is not certainty we need but courage»

Guardian

«A work of beauty embroidered by Miller's exquisite gift for poetic description . . . it is a delight. And though a historical novel with decay its running theme, the writing is dazzlingly fresh and modern»

The Times

«The book pulls off an ambitious project: to evoke a complex historical period through a tissue of deftly selected details»

Sunday Times

«Very atmospheric . . . Although the theme may sound macabre, Miller's eloquent novel overflows with vitality and colour. It is packed with personal and physical details that evoke 18th-century Paris with startling immediacy . . . If you enjoyed Patrick Süskind's Perfume, you'll love this»

Daily Express

«Alive to the dramatic possibilities offered by late-18th-century Paris, a fetid and intoxicating city on the brink of revolution . . . Miller intimately and pacily imagines how it might have felt to witness it»

Daily Telegraph

«Miller generates dynamic comedy and drama from juxtaposing the earthy, bodily realities of the Enlightenment against lofty aspirations of reason and progress. It's engrossing historical fiction»

The Age

«Elegant»

Independent

«Some stories are too wonderful - too filled with wonders - to set in the present. They can't really be called historical fiction because they don't serve history so much as plunder it to invent what might have been. Such is the case with Pure»

New York Times Book Review

«A pacey, well-constructed narrative in which rape, suicide, love and unexplained deaths all play a part. Miller wears his learning lightly and infuses his story with humanity and warmth»

Mail on Sunday

«Vivid and compelling»

Times Literary Supplement

«Enthralling . . . superbly researched, brilliantly narrated and movingly resolved»

Observer

«It draws you in with hallucinatory power to seething Paris on the brink of revolution . . . images remain in your mind long after you reach the last page»

Daily Mail

«Quietly powerful, consistently surprising, Pure is a fine addition to substantial body of work»

Financial Times

«Almost dreamlike, a realistic fantasy, a violent fairytale for adults»

Irish Times

«Every so often a historical novel comes along that is so natural, so far from pastiche, so modern, that it thrills and expands the mind. Pure is one . . . Exquisite inside and out, Pure is a near-faultless thing: detailed, symbolic and richly evocative of a time, place and man in dangerous flux. It is brilliance distilled, with very few impurities»

Sunday Telegraph