What to Look for in Winter

A rare thing: a misery memoir that, while touching the far reaches of pain, leaves one feeling enriched, not dirty

Financial Times

A searingly honest, beautiful book

Kate Mosse, Daily Telegraph

An endlessly rewarding account

Herald

An essential book in all of its aspects, a thing of beauty and of unbearable hurt, of dreadful harm and intense humanity...This is the work of a capacious, open, vulnerable and unfailingly generous soul

Scotsman

Beautiful, harrowing and in every way remarkable

New Statesman

Beautiful..you are left with a sense of desolation

Kate Saunders, The Times

Brilliant but lacerating memoir, written with elegance, sardonic humour and honesty

Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times

Candia McWilliam's story is one of idyllic happiness, terrifying disaster and resolute fightback... Her sentences are like sound ice-cubes - translucent, perfectly shaped, always fit for purpose

The Times

Eloquent and insightful, Candia McWilliam's What to Look for in Winter moved me more than any other book I read this year

Robert Crawford, Sunday Herald, Christmas roundup

Gripping and unexpected... this remarkable memoir, `a baton in the dark', which McWilliam bravely passes to the reader

Literary Review

Her long book yields an unmistakable human being, and is seldom disheartening, woes and all

Times Literary Supplement

In this most startling, discomfiting, complicated, ungovernable, hilarious and heart-rendering of memoirs, McWilliam recounts the suicide of her mother, the breakdown of two marriages, a decade of alcoholism, and the loss of her sight

Daily Telegraph

Is as bleak and deep as a snowscape, with the sudden golden shafts of humour and scholarly erudition one relishes in Candia's work

Nicky Haslam, Evening Standard, Christmas roundup

It's a book written out of sorrow and pain and love. A book that, for all the brilliance of its author, doesn't seem completely aware of everything it has revealed

Andrew Motion, Guardian

It's as if we're reading her thoughts unedited, which makes the many rhythmic, arresting passages all the more impressive. McWilliam doesn't hold back: she makes us feel how frightening it is inside her head. There's no sickly heroism. Resentful, muddles, undignified, unmoored, she is captivating

London Review of Books

It's been too long since Candia McWilliam's last book... She has lost none of her grace of expression and freshness of thought. A remarkable and brave book

Observer

Magnificent memoir. Moving from her childhood in Edinburgh to the experimental surgery that restored her sight, the book is a triumph

Colin Waters

McWilliam is such a good writer, this is an important and useful book

Guardian

McWilliam writes with elegance, with sardonic humour and with honesty...readers can only be grateful for this unforgettable book

Daisy Goodwin, Sunday Times

Miraculous

Hilary Spurling, Guardian

My favourite book of the year, startingly honest, wry, sad and wise

David Nicholls, Guardian, Christmas roundup

No book has moved me more this year. Heartfelt, subtly nuanced and unflinching

Times Literary Supplement, Christmas round up

One of the most devastatingly moving memoirs I've ever read...a work of beauty and truth

Independent

One of the most extraordinary literary autobiographies of this or any other year

The Times

One of the year's most engaging, sardonic and self-flagellating works of confession

Sunday Times, Christmas roundup

Startling and discomforting, complicated, hilarious and heartrending

Sunday Telegraph

Stayed up all night to finish

Allison Pearson, Daily Telegraph, Christmas roundup

The most startling, discomforting, complicated, ungovernable, hilarious and heart-rending of memoirs

Daily Telegraph

Transcends its apparent category through the beauty and freshness of its language, and the stoic nobility of its spirit

Philip Hensher, Spectator, Christmas roundup

What a precise and poetic dissection of a life this is; how brave she was, and how wise, to undertake it

Jane Shilling, Daily Telegraph

What makes her memoir impressive isn't the story she has to tell - rich in drama though it is - but her artistry as a writer

Independent