Candia McWilliam

One of the most extraordinary literary autobiographies of this or any other year

An essential book in all of its aspects, a thing of beauty and of unbearable hurt, of dreadful harm and intense humanity...This is the work of a capacious, open, vulnerable and unfailingly generous soul

One of the most devastatingly moving memoirs I've ever read...a work of beauty and truth

The most startling, discomforting, complicated, ungovernable, hilarious and heart-rending of memoirs

Startling and discomforting, complicated, hilarious and heartrending

McWilliam writes with elegance, with sardonic humour and with honesty...readers can only be grateful for this unforgettable book

It's a book written out of sorrow and pain and love. A book that, for all the brilliance of its author, doesn't seem completely aware of everything it has revealed

Beautiful, harrowing and in every way remarkable

What a precise and poetic dissection of a life this is; how brave she was, and how wise, to undertake it

Transcends its apparent category through the beauty and freshness of its language, and the stoic nobility of its spirit

Beautiful..you are left with a sense of desolation

My favourite book of the year, startingly honest, wry, sad and wise

Is as bleak and deep as a snowscape, with the sudden golden shafts of humour and scholarly erudition one relishes in Candia's work

Eloquent and insightful, Candia McWilliam's What to Look for in Winter moved me more than any other book I read this year

No book has moved me more this year. Heartfelt, subtly nuanced and unflinching

Times Literary Supplement, Christmas round up

One of the year's most engaging, sardonic and self-flagellating works of confession

It's as if we're reading her thoughts unedited, which makes the many rhythmic, arresting passages all the more impressive. McWilliam doesn't hold back: she makes us feel how frightening it is inside her head. There's no sickly heroism. Resentful, muddles, undignified, unmoored, she is captivating

Brilliant but lacerating memoir, written with elegance, sardonic humour and honesty

Candia McWilliam's story is one of idyllic happiness, terrifying disaster and resolute fightback... Her sentences are like sound ice-cubes - translucent, perfectly shaped, always fit for purpose

What makes her memoir impressive isn't the story she has to tell - rich in drama though it is - but her artistry as a writer

Magnificent memoir. Moving from her childhood in Edinburgh to the experimental surgery that restored her sight, the book is a triumph

In this most startling, discomfiting, complicated, ungovernable, hilarious and heart-rendering of memoirs, McWilliam recounts the suicide of her mother, the breakdown of two marriages, a decade of alcoholism, and the loss of her sight

McWilliam is such a good writer, this is an important and useful book

Gripping and unexpected... this remarkable memoir, `a baton in the dark', which McWilliam bravely passes to the reader

It's been too long since Candia McWilliam's last book... She has lost none of her grace of expression and freshness of thought. A remarkable and brave book

Her long book yields an unmistakable human being, and is seldom disheartening, woes and all

A rare thing: a misery memoir that, while touching the far reaches of pain, leaves one feeling enriched, not dirty

Candia McWilliam had just joined the judging panel of the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2006 when she started to lose her sight. The gradual onset of blindness seemed especially cruel to someone whose life depended on reading and writing. As McWilliam's sight disappeared she looked inwards and began to remember her Edinburgh childhood, her mother's suicide, her teenage escape into another identity, her marriages, her children and, stalking all these memories, her increasing alcoholism. 
 
What To Look For In Winter is a magical, uplifting and truly wise book about families and friendship, love and loss and that most elusive of things - a sense of self.

Candia McWilliam

Praise for What to Look for in Winter

One of the most extraordinary literary autobiographies of this or any other year

An essential book in all of its aspects, a thing of beauty and of unbearable hurt, of dreadful harm and intense humanity...This is the work of a capacious, open, vulnerable and unfailingly generous soul

A searingly honest, beautiful book

One of the most extraordinary literary autobiographies of this or any other year

An essential book in all of its aspects, a thing of beauty and of unbearable hurt, of dreadful harm and intense humanity...This is the work of a capacious, open, vulnerable and unfailingly generous soul

A searingly honest, beautiful book

One of the most extraordinary literary autobiographies of this or any other year

An essential book in all of its aspects, a thing of beauty and of unbearable hurt, of dreadful harm and intense humanity...This is the work of a capacious, open, vulnerable and unfailingly generous soul

A searingly honest, beautiful book

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