The Widow Tree Reviews
“…a carefully crafted story that layers suspense and succeeds in rendering each betrayal, small or large, as a painful shock…As a writer, Lundrigan is sleek and spare with the gift of rendering small details in vivid strokes that leave them lingering long after we have turned the page…“
Laura Eggertson
Toronto Star
“...an emotionally intense study of strained relationships, but this time [Lundrigan has] embedded the mysteries of the human heart in a solid mystery.”
The Evening Telegram
“Horrifying but fascinating, the story is enthralling.”
Publishers Weekly
“… for its brutal genius.”
Toronto Public Libraries, Staff Pick, December 2013
“Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2013″
Quill & Quire
“Where Lundrigan succeeds, where she’s always succeeded in fact, is in her ability to craft rich, absorbing, affecting characters so vivid that they appear to live and breathe in a time and space all of their own.”
Aaron Westerman
Typographical Era
“Lundrigan tackles the terrain of 1950s Yugoslavia with such a graceful confidence and intimate knowledge of her subject, you will be transported. Deftly threading its metaphors like a suture on the body politic of this former nation, this is one of the most surprising and important works of literary fiction this year.”
Whitney Moran
The Coast
“Lundrigan’s incantation of a Balkan village rubbed raw by history is sensual and powerful, a coming-of-age story set in a world that eats its young.”
Peter Behrens
Author of The Law of Dreams
“The Widow Tree is a dense book — the prose thickly woven with metaphor, immensely detailed and often poetic… This time around, Lundrigan, a Newfie-Lit darling, convincingly animates a 1950s Yugoslavian village, populating it with a cast of characters who know their way around intrigue, both political and personal: a father mysteriously killed, a discovered horde of Roman coins, and love triangles past and present. …Lundrigan ultimately rewards the persevering with an absorbing, beautiful read.“
Elle Magazine
“The reader follows the dissection of these lives with a kind of fascinated horror—there is little comfort to be found—but the telling is so intense and the writing so compelling there can be no question of setting it aside before the end.”
Margaret Thompson
The Coastal Spectator
“The Widow Tree is a richly rendered literary mystery with well-wrought characters…As always with Nicole’s work, this is an emotionally intense study of strained relationships, but this time she’s embedded the mysteries of the human heart in a solid mystery of a story. One that’s about ‘fatal plans and silent betrayals.’ It’s a fabulous fifth novel by a Canadian author more people ought to be reading.“
Chad Pelley
Salty Ink
“…strongly plotted novel…The Widow Tree deftly dramatizes the ways family tragedies play out against the larger backdrop of national and ethnic interests.“
Candace Fertile
Quill & Quire