Graceland

Graceland is an astonishing literary achievement. Bethan Roberts somehow manages to unlock the mystery to that beautiful sadness in the voice of Elvis. Utterly heartbreaking.

Jake Arnott

One is always in safe hands with Bethan Roberts, especially when the subject is love.

Lynne Truss

Bethan Roberts grew up in a house filled with Elvis’s music and pored over her mother’s Elvis annuals and scrapbooks as a child… its emotional range rings true and its fidelity to a certain strain of wistful melancholy might go deeper than facts... an understated, thoughtful novel about a man who wore suits fashioned from gold leaf on stage, which occasionally prompts the reader to burst into song.

Susie Boyt, Financial Times

A beautifully captured portrait

Joanne Finney, Good Housekeeping

Roberts has done her research and is a loving curator of the legend, but she’s strong, too on the tiny sensual details, which intensify the up-close feel of this sensitive, measured novel

Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail

An immediately convincing evocation of time and place, as well as character, colour, sultry heat and complex emotions... Moving effortlessly between the late 1950s and Elvis's straitened upbringing, it vividly conveys his world

Sunday Times

Roberts is an exceptionally tender and empathetic writer, and the story of Elvis Presley and his relationship with his mother is one ripe for her skills… both epic and intimate

Grazia

Extraordinarily moving

Choice

This is an impressive, deceptively gentle novel, full of quiet music and even quieter tragedy

Claire Allfree, Daily Telegraph

Roberts is skilled at evoking the sexy, squalid atmosphere of Memphis in the 1950s. There’s a down-at-heel glamour that the reader can smell and taste

Alan Murrin, Times Literary Supplement

One of the best books about a rock star I've ever read

David Hepworth