'A true original ... extraordinary talent' - Independent (2025)

'Donoghue is not a timid custodian of the past but an excavator, digging beneath bromides to unearth the defiant truth.' - Irish Times (2025)

'Emma Donoghue is among the most fearless contemporary novelists we have: an immensely talented writer who is a great storyteller and, based on her extensive body of work, unafraid of subjects that give her less courageous peers pause.' - Washington Post (2023)

'Donoghue excels at turning historical eras and settings into compelling, believable fiction. Like the best teachers at school, she packs the learning and knowledge in without the reader ever getting bored. Nothing is laboured; her skill is her lightness of touch.' - Irish Times (2023)

'A master of the microcosm ... a trademark of Donoghue's fiction is the blend of profundity and plot' - Guardian (2023)

'Emma Donoghue is a genius of compassion.  With her, the ethical imagination is always paramount. In our fractured world she brings a great sense of repair to us all.  Her stories bind us back together.' - Colum McCann (2023)

'It's clear there’s no century in the history of this world that couldn’t be teased into a compelling read by author Emma Donoghue.' - Calgary Herald (2022)

'Donoghue often writes about outsiders ... combine[s] older-world settings with stories that have an eerie resonance for contemporary society. Her trademark is an ability to blend allegory, fairy tale, myth, and particularly meticulous research seamlessly into new works of fiction.' - Irish Times (2022)

'Few writers boomerang between genres and time periods as nimbly' - Reader's Digest (2020)

'Happily able to reinvent herself with everything she writes. ... Emma Donoghue has a gift for taking details from the past and creating believable and absorbing worlds around them.' - The Tablet (2020)

'Reading Donoghue’s books is sometimes like falling in love unexpectedly. She draws you in with her deep empathy for outsiders.'  - The independent (2020)

'The Dublin-born writer is one of our greatest living prose stylists. ... She is serious, wise and funny. She draws from the mind’s eye and has a perfect ear for language as it is spoken.' - The Australian (2020)

''Donoghue [is] a cultural historian of no minor stature. ... a giant of letters.' - Irish Independent (2020)

'These rooms of Donoghue’s may be tiny and sealed off, yet they teem with life-and-death drama and great moral questions.' - Washington Post (2016) 

'We can count on her to plumb the heart of human darkness.' - Newsday (2016)

'Donoghue is a master of plot, and her prose is especially exquisite at depicting ambiguity.' - Time (2016)

'She can do everything: be funny, be moving, be unflinching yet sensitive, write beautifully nuanced sentences and utterly gripping stories. She can write powerful historical fiction and be absolutely contemporary. And she's unable to write a line you don't believe.' - Joseph O'Connor (2015)

‘Reading an Emma Donoghue book is like falling into a deep friendship with an unlikely stranger: a lady of the evening, an cross-dressing frogcatcher, an imprisoned child.  The author’s empathy for outsiders makes for captivating characters; she illustrates the complex inner lives of her creations with a candor that shows humanity at its best and worst.’ – Washington Post (2014)

‘An uncanny knack for telling an off-putting story in such a way that you can’t stop reading it, that you fall a little bit in love with the characters and the moment in time.' - Seattle Times (2014)

‘Donoghue is so gifted at depicting the fraught blessing of motherhood.” – Chicago Tribune (2014)

‘Can inhabit any kind of fictional character and draw us into even the most unfamiliar world with her deep empathy and boundary-defying imagination.’ - Newsday (2012)

‘Donoghue is one of those rare writers who seems to be able to work on any register, any tone, any atmosphere, and make it her own.’ – Observer (2007)

‘Her touch is so light and exuberantly inventive, her insight at once so forensic and intimate, her people so ordinary even in their oddities.’ – Guardian (2007)

‘A mind that can excavate characters and lives far, far beyond her own front fence.’ – Globe and Mail (2007)

‘Donoghue has the born storyteller’s knack for sketching a personality and pulling readers into a plot in just a few pages… All-encompassing talent.’ – Kirkus (2006)

‘Emma Donoghue is distinguished by her generous sympathy for her characters, sinuous prose and imaginative range ... Has an extraordinary talent for turning exhaustive research into plausible characters and narratives; she presents a vibrant world seething with repressed feeling and class tensions.’ – Publishers Weekly (2004)

‘Her informed imaginings combined with her sheer cleverness and elegance as a writer breathe vivid life into real characters who heretofore resided in the footnotes of history.’ – Irish Times (2002)

‘Every now and again, a writer comes along with a fully loaded brain and a nature so fanciful that she simply must spin out truly original and transporting stuff… Eccentric, untethered genius.’ – Seattle Times (2002)