“Maurice has the heart of a sniper . . . marvelously engaging, barbed and witty.”—The New York Times Book Review
“A darkly funny novel that races like a beating heart.”—People
“Maurice Swift may not be much of a novelist, but he inhabits a literary tradition going to back to Patricia Highsmith. Boyne’s protagonist is Tom Ripley as literary climber. . . . Boyne’s novel is about high literature but has lower, juicier ambitions, at which it wildly succeeds.”—Vulture
“For Patricia Highsmith fans, thriller aficionados, writers, publishers, literary wannabees, scoundrel sympathizers, John Boyne offers the perfect entertainment for dark winter days.”—Boston Globe
“A taut and gripping novel . . . as craftily written as Swift himself.”—Esquire
“It’s dark, it’s funny, it’s the most unusual read I had this year….You will read it like that. Highly recommend it.”—Harlan Coben, NBC Today Show holiday gift picks
“A Talented Mr. Ripley-esque novel of greed and deceit.”—New York Post
“John Boyne’s new novel charts the rise and fall of an antihero cut from the same cloth as Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley…. Darkly comic and deliciously vicious, this mesmerizing portrait of a ruthless psychopath explores artistic endeavor, creative ambition and ‘whether our stories belong to us at all.’” – Minneapolis Star Tribune
“A Ladder to the Sky is clever, chilling and beautifully paced; a study of inner corrosion that Patricia Highsmith herself could not have done better… wickedly astute.”—The Times (London)
“Maurice Swift is a literary Tom Ripley . . . a first-class page turner.”—The Guardian
“A deliciously dark tale of ambition, seduction and literary theft . . . compelling and terrifying . . . powerful and intensely unsettling . . . in Maurice Swift, Boyne has given us an unforgettable protagonist, dangerous and irresistible in equal measure. The result is an ingeniously conceived novel that confirms Boyne as one of the most assured writers of his generation.”—The Observer
“Are novelists, by definition, monsters? John Boyne raises this provocative possibility in “A Ladder to the Sky… A deft plotter, Boyne has fun with the idea that vampiring is simply part of what novelists do, and he implicates readers in their acts of thievery-as-creation by making us like despicable Maurice, almost against our will.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
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