Reading these superb stories…I had the sense that Gardam, a sensitive writer regardless of subject matter or genre, may not draw much of a distinction between "children's" and "adult" books either, at least when she's writing. Her territory isn't young or old; it's the heart- and brain-matter of people, their desires and worries and fantasies and intricate interactions…The Hollow Land…includes perceptive observations about human nature and is descriptively accurate…The beauty and evocation of place are reminiscent of Willa Cather's My Ántonia, which is read by both children and adults…The Hollow Land is a beautiful little book about how people live, in families and in communities and in one particular patch of world.

Featured as one of the New York Times Book Review's "100 Notable Books of 2015"

“Jane Gardam has a spectacular gift for detail of the local and period kind, and for details which made characters so subtly unpredictable that they ring true.” – Times Literary Supplement
 
“Gardam’s prose is so economical that no moment she describes is either gratuitous or wasted.” –The New Yorker
 
“Gardam is an exquisite storyteller, picking up threads, laying them down, returning to them and giving them new meaning.” –The Seattle Times
 
“Gardam will bring immense pleasure to readers who treasure fiction that is intelligent, witty, sophisticated.” –The Washington Post