Hotel Iris

Both very weird and very good... Image by perfect image, we are led down into a mysterious and gripping universe, simultaneously beautiful and terrifying... From the opening sentences of Hotel Iris you know that every word will count and that every scene will be the occasion for strong and strange feeling

Times Literary Supplement

Exploring dark desires is something at which Ogawa has become disconcertingly adept

New York Times

It's brave territory for Ogawa, and she manages in with sharp focus; she creates moments of breathtaking ugliness, often when least expected...but also sometimes a longing that is touching and tender

Independent

Ogawa explores the power of words to allure and destroy in this haiku-like fable of love contorted into obsession... A savage novel

Publishers Weekly

Precisely written, this dreamlike narrative expands into an ambiguous story of sexual dependency and damage. Ogawa's exact prose glitters as menacingly as the surrounding sea

Emma Hagestadt, Independent

To read Ogawa is to enter a dreamlike state tinged with a nightmare... She possesses an effortless, glassy, eerie brilliance

Guardian