"Full of several different kinds of passion with a real tragedy at its heart." (Margaret Forster )^"Never clichd, thanks largely to Hamilton's frankly poetic language and masterful portait of childhood.a beautiful memoir." (Publishers Weekly )^"A fine and timely book from an exquisitely gifted writer...beautiful, subtle, unflashy, perfectly realized and quite extraordinarily powerful." (Joseph O'Connor )^"An astonishing achievement...a landmark in Irish nonfiction.a masterpiece." (Washington Post )^"A complex and layered story, intriguingly different from all those other Irish-childhood memoirs." (Orlando Sentinel )^"Hamilton's style is an engaging mix of the salty and literary." (New York Times Book Review )^"A masterful piece of work-timely, inventive, provocative and perfectly weighted. Don't be surprised if it becomes a classic." (Colum McCann )^"A memoir of childhood that often reads like a craftily composed work of fiction." (Daily Telegraph (London) )^"The most gripping book I've read in ages...a fascinating, disturbing and often very funny memoir." (Roddy Doyle )^"A memoir of warmth and wisdom...tender and profound and, best of all, tells the truth. I loved it." (Patrick McCabe )^"The long wait for this most talented novelist to cast his eye over his homeland has been worth it." (GQ )^"A prize-delicate, achingly well-observed and wonderfully moving." (A.L. Kennedy )^"A wonderful, subtle, problematic and humane book....about Ireland...about a particular family...about alternatives and complexities anywhere." (Irish Times )^"Evocative, agitating and inspiriting, Speckled People sticks up for diversity and principled dissent...extending the scope of Irish memoir." (Independent )^"Hamilton's most successful book to date, after building up a fine reputation as a novelist." (Irish Voice )^"A fine reminder that there are many ways of being Irish." (New York Newsday )^"Unlike most Irish memoirs, this one is devoid of sentimentality. Which doesn't make it any the less heartrending. " (Philadelphia Inquirer )^"An astonishing account, both delicate and strong, of great issues of twentieth-century Europe, modern Ireland, and family everywhere." (Nuala O'Faolain )