That Summer at Hill Farm

Beautifully rendered, the shifting inner lives of the characters are subtle and believable and the fresh, sometimes subversive observation is a delight – Elizabeth Buchan * Sunday Times *
Miranda France writes skillfully and with a wry touch… That Summer at Hill Farm is a pleasure to read, tempting the reader to wolf it down in one * Sunday Herald *
An arresting writer…France’s account of village life conveys a genuine, smoldering anger… Adultery, arson and assault - all come bursting out * Guardian *
Pyromaniac labourers, feuding pensioners and adulterous housewives blot the landscape in Miranda France’s entertaining novel, a sort of homage to Cold Comfort Farm, with a dash of Jilly Cooper and The Archers thrown in – Adrian Turpin * Financial Times *
With an incredible confidence for a debut novelist, Miranda France changes tack from rural romance to murder mystery…[she] writes with such assurance and humour that she carries us along…through the subtle underpinning of her characterization * Spectator *
Reads like The Archers written by Tolstoy…This debut novel from a well-known travel scribe twists coming-of-age drama with Karenina-esque sensual discovery, and perfectly captures the more Gothic aspects of country life * Daily Mail *
Miranda France has minutely drawn a farming community, and a broken woman, with excellent skill. She is superb at plucking comedy from tragedy, as well as exhibiting a wry authorial narrative that must owe more than a little to Jane Austen. She manages to square this lightness of tone with a subtle tale full of secrecy, betrayal and fear that keeps you clinging on right to the very end * The List *
A convincing depiction of the way in which ordinary lives can be nudged towards quiet tragedy * Literary Review *
France writes superbly about the reality of living in the countryside - and the pitch-black ending chills the blood. * Saga Magazine *
It’s impossible to avoid comparisons with Stella Gibbons…But Miranda France’s debut novel is set in modern-day Sussex and she has drawn on her farming roots to a paint a picture of bucolic pastures. * Sussex Life *

Miranda France is a writer and translator. The author of two highly acclaimed travel books, Bad Times in Buenos Aires and Don Quixote’s Delusions, she has won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize and was shortlisted for the Thomas Cook Travel Book Award. She has translated Argentine writers including Alberto Manguel, Claudia Pineiro and Liliana Heker. She grew up on a farm not unlike the farm that featured in her first novel, That Summer at Hill Farm, but now lives in London with her husband and two children. The Day Before the Fire is her second novel.

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