Your Presence is Requested at Suvanto

A beautiful, edgy and captivating novel

Victoria Moore, Daily Mail

A gem; weird, vivid and acrobatic, its intricacies are sophisticated, its stance beguiling and complex. This is a writer of real power and aplomb

Lucy Ellmann, Guardian

An eerily brilliant, psychologically sharp take on the Bacchae set in a 1920s Finnish sanatorium

Adrian Turpin, Herald, Christmas round up

Chapman deftly ratchets up the tension, pitting off-kilter emotions against a sense psychological doom as the novel builds to an unsettling conclusion

Marie Claire

Exceptional... more than simply an exercise in chilling atmospherics... Chapman takes the women's - often seemingly petty - hopes and fears, and creates a fascinating portrait of group consciousness. A psychologically unnerving, elusive and readable book

Financial Times

Has the compelling horror of a Gothic fairy tale... Chapman creates a novel that stays with the reader and leaves a sense of being drawn inexorably into a deepening nightmare

Tina Jackson, Metro

Quietly and carefully, Chapman evokes the oppressive indoor life of the self-interned 'up-patients'. There is an elegant sparseness to her writing, complemented by her use of tactile metaphors

Lucy Scholes, Times Literary Supplement

Rural Finland may not seem a very likely locale for a gripping intellectual thriller, but pulling this off is merely the first of Maile Chapman's many accomplishments here. Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto - what a title! - is as creepy as Patricia Highsmith at her best and as psychologically sharp (and confounding) as early Ian McEwan. With its portrayal of how quickly the conscience in shipwreck succumbs to delusion, Chapman has written more than a beautifully observed and utterly convincing first novel: she has written something of unfakeable importance

Tom Bissell

Subtly, disquietingly hermetic

The Lady

This scary, peculiar story of institutionalised women is immaculately handled and builds to a disturbing but inevitable climax

The Times

This subtly unnerving tale raise goose bumps as the tension builds towards the menacing finale

Mslexia