Sarah Gilmartin is a natural writer: she gives us terrific, complex characters and strong themes, in prose that is fluent and charged with insight -- Anne Enright, Booker Prize-winning author and former Laureate for Irish Fiction

I loved her clean, forensic writing. Gilmartin is clearly a writer to watch -- Clare Chambers, author of Women's Prize Longlisted SMALL PLEASURES

Gilmartin writes beautifully - Sunday Times Culture

The search is off - here is our next read... Here is an expert writer... Taut, compelling, Enright-esque -- Meg Mason, author of SORROW AND BLISS

Sarah Gilmartin's depiction of an Irish family across the decades leaves the reader in no doubt how complicated love can be. A brilliant debut -- John Boyne, bestselling author of THE HEART'S INVISIBLE FURIES

One of the best Irish debuts I've read this year. A novel of family - full of warmth, insight, tragedy and, ultimately, how to survive it all... -- Rick O'Shea

A finely observed Irish debut - Guardian

Astutely captures the claustrophobia of Irish families - disappointments, rivalry and the need to make everyone happy -- Sinead Gleeson, author of CONSTELLATIONS

The language is clear and precise, the imagery vivid and imaginative... [an] assured, elegant debut - Irish Independent

Dinner Party is a gorgeously wrought and moving read - Irish Times

Dinner Party? is a beautifully observed, dark and twisty novel that thrillingly unravels into family secrets and tragedy - Grazia

Exquisitely captured... beautifully paced, confident and insightful - Daily Mail

An unravelling of tragedy that the reader watches in horror... Sarah Gilmartin's page-turning literary debut is a fresh, confident and compelling new take on sibling dynamics and family secrets that are never far from the surface -- Henrietta McKervey, author of A TALENTED MAN

A classic Irish family saga... achieving epic proportions from the most intimate of settings... A blazing new talent in Irish fiction -- Gavin Corbett, author of THIS IS THE WAY

Dinner Party is a tense and thought-provoking novel about family; desires, frustrations and their undercurrents, the landmines that people fear they'll set off if they say the wrong thing and the irresistible urge, on occasion, to do just that. Beautifully written and highly accomplished, with evocative settings and characters which will stay with me for a long time. I loved it -- Andrea Carter, author of the INISHOWEN MYSTERIES

An immensely powerful debut novel from a writer here to stay. Sarah Gilmartin is a really wonderful storyteller -- Joseph O'Connor, bestselling author of STAR OF THE SEA

Gilmartin has a forensic eye for the little moments and mumbled asides which reveal both her character's faults and strengths. She writes sharply and cleanly but always with a degree of compassion -- Jan Carson, author of THE FIRESTARTERS

Stylish and funny, acutely attentive to the painful dynamics of family, Dinner Party is a good book and an exceptional first novel from a gifted writer -- Conor O'Callaghan, author of WE ARE NOT IN THE WORLD

Compulsive -- Victoria Kennefick, author of T.S. Eliot Prize-shortlisted Eat or We Both Starve

A different kind of modern Irish novel [...] it made me think of Belinda McKeon or Anne Enright [...] It's a really open-hearted, compassionate book shaped by tragedies and the subdued, but finally warm, survival instinct of one family in the face of tragedy -- Niamh Campbell, author of THIS HAPPY

A family gathering goes disastrously wrong in Gilmartin's raw, emotionally searing novel about the toxicity of secrets and the inescapable lure of home -- Waterstones

This delicately studied tale of an Irish family's turmoil shows how pain can unite us - Sunday Times Ireland

Dinner Party dramatizes the way death rips through families, destabilizing the fragile structures keeping them in place - TLS

Here is a sprightliness and deftness of touch in Gilmartin's writing, interspersed with wry and dark humour - The Bookseller

Hugely accomplished... Dinner Party examines family ties - close bonds, loose links, knotty connections - and follows one member in her attempts to sever them. It makes for a compelling portrait of a woman losing her grip on reality and a perceptive study of enduring grief - The Herald (Scotland)

Dinner Party: A Tragedy is a strong, serious novel often leavened by warmth and good humour even as havoc and calamity lurk just beneath the surface - Books Ireland

A funny and moving book by a very talented writer - The Gloss

Gilmartin has an incisive instinct for elevating dread in a scene. From the dark humour, Joe Orton-esque theatrical setting of the opening dinner party tableau... Gilmartin displays a deft hold over the gothic flavour of the story, while allowing proper weight to fall on the all-too-human tragedy - Irish Independent

[A] brilliant look at family dynamics - Irish Examiner

Gilmartin's prose is pitch-perfect, deceptively simple yet containing some blissfully delicate and poetically accurate descriptions - Sunday Business Post

That intractable feeling of belonging, beyond grief and bitterness, so powerfully told here, is what ultimately runs through each of those gorgeously written pages - The Big Issue

SARAH GILMARTIN is a critic who reviews fiction for the Irish Times. She is co-editor of the anthology Stinging Fly Stories and has an MFA from University College Dublin. She won Best Playwright at the inaugural Short+Sweet Dublin festival. Her short stories have been published in The Dublin Review, The Tangerine and New Irish Writing. Her story 'The Wife' won the 2020 Máirtín Crawford Award at Belfast Book Festival.