Press Coverage Spring 2004

In his review of Tea with Mr Rochester in The Spectator Matthew Dennison wrote: ‘Frances Towers’s writing is full of delicate implications; happily for the reader, each is neatly pinned. Such is the deftness of her touch, her elegant legerdemain, that she conceals the building blocks of her artistry, simply nudging the reader towards ecognition of that implication that repeatedly in her stories provides the denouement… Towers’s combination of detachment and brutality is all the more striking in a writer whose prose is so consistently, involvingly beautiful.’ Lucy Lethbridge in The Tablet said: ‘Hers is a tightly drawn, delicately observed world. These stories operate within a narrow social sphere but she sketches the fragile dramas within it with needle-sharp precision. All is cool, precise and airy.’ And, said Valerie Grove in The Oldie, ‘five short stories by Frances Towers went out on Radio 4 read by Romola Garai, Emilia Fox and Susannah Harker. Tea with Mr Rochester is luminously word-perfect, quirky and original.'

The Wise Virgins was reviewed in The Spectator by Kate Chisholm, who observed: ‘You have the sense that despite its elegant jacket and endpapers from Persephone this novel is set to deliver an explosive bombshell that will force you to confront all those uncomfortable thoughts you rather wish you didn’t have ...there are wonderful moments.’ Dina Shiloh in the Jewish Quarterly praised ‘a vivid slice of history, portraying an England now gone forever. . . Most of all, the book gives a sense of the immense, complicated emotions Virginia aroused in Leonard: why he was so keen to marry this independent, gifted woman… The alternative was marrying a suburban, mousy Gwen.’ And Jonathan Self in the Jewish Chronicle called The Wise Virgins ‘a beautiful, moving and wry novel that should be judged on its own merits and not as some sort of literary curiosity... Throughout the prose is taut and precise, the observation penetrating.’

The Church Times said of Miss Ranskill comes Home that ‘the writing is spare and sensitive, the humour wry, the situation both comic and tragic’, while The Spectator’s reviewer commented: ‘Everywhere she goes, Miss Ranskill encounters closed minds and a kind of awful self-righteous patriotism. No one seems able to listen. But ultimately the romantic comedy deepens to give the book its moral core and with a nicely unexpected twist the romance with the Carpenter is ‘consummated’ in that Miss Ranskill is able to pass love on.’ The Tablet’s reviewer ‘very much enjoyed this ambitious and unusual book,’ calling it‘warm, satirical, and historically fascinating… psychologically this is, in many ways, a very accurate novel and Miss Ranskill’s character is engaging and almost always convincing.’ And Best of British magazine thought that the book’s ‘blend of fantasy, satire and gentle comedy packs a powerful message about people’s effect on each other in times of varying circumstances. It entertains from the start.’

The Bournemouth Daily Echo described the stories in Tea with Mr Rochester as ‘wise, perceptive, containing acute observations of life and love’ and called The Home-maker ‘way ahead of its time, still bright, observant and relevant today. Persephone have discovered yet another great read.’

The Oldie thought Good Food on the Aga ‘a delight for all cooks, not just those with Agas’, as did the Irish Times, which concluded: ‘There are cute books, there are beautiful books, and then there are Persephone books.’