'An original, at times brilliant work that in its avoidance of cliche, its restorative effect on language, actually does recall Beckett.' Guardian 'A wild, untamed work, one of the most ambitious, unusual and difficult first novels in recent Australian literary history.' Australian 'Dodge Rose is fresh and astonishingly good, but it is also an author's challenge to a reader. Not a challenge to question one's morals or their life-choices, but to examine the very technique of reading.' Readings 'Frequently brilliant.' Literary Review 'A book about the way language can hum...Cox is a beautiful writer.' Saturday Paper 'Brilliant and dark, mysterious and immediate, moving and maddening, disturbing and entertaining...[an] extraordinary first novel that compacts the histories of a continent and of a family into a dazzle of two hundred pages.' Times Literary Supplement