THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS - Tapa blanda

A formidably intelligent, gentle, comic genius ... In a hundred years she will be read as Mrs Gaskell is read (A. N. Wilson SPECTATOR)

Gardam ... has written another jewel. This tale of the three young women is made with a concentrate of humour and compassion. Gardam is a brilliantly subtle comedian who can keep the reader enraptured until the last page (THE TIMES)

Jane Gardam has captured the burgeoning renaissance of post-war Britain in her novel THE FLIGHT OF THE MAIDENS. Writing with her usual deft and sensitive touch... Gardam paints scenes like a watercolour and every stroke adds depth and subtlety. The characters are rounded and appealing and humour often bubbles beneath the surface. (Christina McLoughlin, AMAZON.CO.UK REVIEW)

Gardam has a pleasant, accessible style well-suited to a reassuring tale of regeneration and optimism after adversity. (OBSERVER)

As a celebration of the rites of passage it rings diamond true. It is light, witty, sharp, yet understanding and sympathetic. It is also thoroughly enjoyable (SCOTSMAN)

Gardam blends memory and imagination, intellect and humour, to evoke unsentimentally a vanished England, setting it in the context of the wider world and capturing the bittersweet excitement of leaving childhood behind (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

Jane Gardam, as ever, shapes her narrative with wit and aplomb ... intelligent, inspiriting and entertaining (INDEPENDENT)

She does fiction as it should be done, with confidence and insight (Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Observer)

Jane Gardam has been awarded the Heywood Hill Literary Prize for a lifetime's contribution to the enjoyment of literature; has twice won a Whitbread Award and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She was awarded an OBE in January 2009.