THE EVENING CHORUS - Tapa blanda

A poised, lyrical novel about the griefs of war, written with poetic intensity of observation (Helen Dunmore)

Poignantly explores the sorrows of war and consolations of nature ... A story of heartbreak and hope, it unfolds against a mesmerizingly described natural world. (Mail on Sunday 2015-05-10)

The Evening Chorus serenades people brutally marked by war yet enduring to live the tiny pleasures of another day. With her trademark prose Humphreys convinces us of the birdlike strength of the powerless. (Emma Donoghue)

In The Evening Chorus the interventions of war, and the resulting human tragedies, play out against a natural world at once remote, alien and ultimately redemptive. The novel has a crystalline quality about it - it's clear and complex and self-contained. It sparkles. (Jo Baker, author of Longbourn)

If there's a writer of English prose with a more profound connection to the natural world and to the subtleties of human love and sorrow than Helen Humphreys, I don't know who it is. The Evening Chorus is rich with her particular gift for symphonic cadences and beautiful imagery that moves a story forward with the momentum of a big train gathering speed. This riveting novel is a song. Listen. (Richard Bausch, author of The Last Good Time, the forthcoming Before, During, After and others)

Humphreys has a gift for complex characterization, which she renders in a few terse strokes. (The Boston Globe)

Humphreys has an impeccable command of imagery, and her prose finds strength in its subtlety. (Publishers Weekly)

A heartbreaking yet redemptive story about loss and survival surrounding a British prisoner of war during World War II and the wife he barely got to know before his capture ... Humphreys deserves more recognition for the emotional intensity and evocative lyricism of her seemingly straightforward prose and for her ability to quietly squirrel her way into the reader's heart. (Kirkus 2014-12-08)

A lyrical narrative about loss, love and the natural world. (Matilda Bathurst Country Life 2015-03-17)

A lyrical novel about war and the natural world and their effects on human beings. Beautifully written, the story it tells about the secrets within relationships, some expected, others surprising, makes this novel a quiet pleasure. (Diva 2015-06-01)