“Reading the McNally Edition’s reprint of A Green Equinox by Elizabeth Mavor was a sprawling pleasure (come for the oddly troubled surface of a reclaimed gravel-pit, stay for the tragicomedy of intergenerational queer desire).”

– Eley Williams, Granta, Books of the Year

“Funny, surprising and unpredictable. This extraordinary novel . . . operates as a cry for passion and against lassitude . . . A Green Equinox is a book whose transgressive nature slips by the reader easily through the comedy, colour and final tragedy of its telling. There is a particular sensibility here—unpredictability, comedy in darkness, turning things upside down in fewer than 200 pages—that recalls Barbara Comyns or Muriel Spark. But most of all this is that rare bird, a novel entirely sui generis, with no clear antecedents and no imitators. It is old-fashioned in the best way: intrepid, eccentric, and not giving a damn.”

– John Self, The Guardian

“In a reissue of the late Mavor’s 1973 Booker Prize­–shortlisted novel, heroine Hero Kinoull is already in the throes of an affair—the first of three she will have over the course of a year . . . [In] lush and ornate prose . . . she effectively captures the timelessness of love, grief, sexuality, illness, and desire. A transgressive novel about love, art, and gender is given new life.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“This vibrant and resonant story of love and sickness from Mavor (1927–2013) was shortlisted for the Booker when it was first published in 1973 . . . The plague sections of this unconventional story feel au courant, as does the timeless exploration of the many different ways to approach love. Mavor’s passionate story endures."

– Publishers Weekly

"Could be discribed as a mix between Beatrix Potter, J. G. Ballard, and Sophocles . . . A strange, intriguing novel."

– Lucy Sweeney Byrne, Irish Times

“Elizabeth Mavor relishes spirited, unorthodox women, free with their tongues and ready to snap their fingers at convention.”

– Jane Adam Smith, London Review of Books

"Funny and brave and moving and absolutely bonkers. I love this novel."

– Charlotte Mendelson

“Buoyant and witty . . . full of English idiosyncrasy and of English nonsense and intelligence.”

– Karl Miller

“Elizabeth Mavor is a précieuse without being ridicule. Her dialogue is stylized and stylish, but the note once pitched is skillfully stuck to. Her plot is formal, unfolded with a measured, steady hand. Symbols recognizably smile or frown at you as you go along, like statuettes bordering a cossetted flower-garden. The whole book is very much of a ‘performance,’ at once graceful, mannered and, in no pejorative sense, remote.”

– David Williams, The Times

“A thoughtful, intensely lyrical book.”

– Roger Garfitt, The Listener