'This novel explodes into life with one of the most arresting openings since Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love. A girl is stoned to death. In many respects it is unlike McEwan’s description of a man falling to his death: the shock is not wrung out in the same slow motion; it is not, primarily, a narrative about the slippery nature of knowledge, ambiguity, responsibility. Instead it is a stark and unambiguous depiction of human brutality towards the despised, the utter failure of empathy. But the same generative power is there. The image sets a course, and a tone, for the rest of the book.' (Introduction)
