Unexploded

An intelligent, perceptive novel by a writer of great descriptive power . . . Like her modernist forebears, MacLeod knows that life and death, the terrible and the mundane always co-exist - her genius lies in illustrating these truths while simultaneously spinning a bona fide pageturner

Daily Mail

A persuasive period setting, an intricate plot, sumptuous prose

Daily Telegraph

Finely wrought, moving and haunting. What a wonderful novel this is. Bravo Alison MacLeod

Polly Samson

'MacLeod's fictions are evocations of desire and its mysteries . . . [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to

Guardian

MacLeod has an engaged delight in the stuff of life

Times Literary Supplement

Love, fear and prejudice are all skilfully anatomised in this compellingly intimate exploration of life in war time Brighton

Jane Rogers

Unexploded is an unforgettable book. With exquisitely researched and rendered detail, the author plunges us into the panic and paranoia of war, fusing international politics, national politics and family politics in her powerful study of hypocrisy, oppression, cultural misunderstanding and desire

Bidisha

Compelling, fast-paced, powerful. The descriptions of wartime Brighton are pin-sharp . . . the denouement is as heartrending as it is unexpected

Financial Times

An exploration of the xenophobia and neurosis unleashed in times of national crisis . . . MacLeod remains one of the most astute chaoticians writing today

Guardian

MacLeod's range - spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal - is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified in awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty

Metro

Like a piece of finely wrought ironwork, uncommonly delicate but at the same time astonishingly strong and tensile . . . a novel of staggering elegance and beauty

Independent