Kerry Young is a stand-alone talent in the new emerging generation of writers from the Caribbean region. Her stories are gritty and also funny and very real * Monique Roffey * Impressive ... With grace, authenticity and humour, Young lets Jamaica's political history shine through the life story of her charming yet fallible hero. Brilliant * Daily Mail on Pao * A vivid portrayal ... Kerry Young's heartfelt, sparky and affecting debut novel is a chronicle of multicultural Jamaica, both in its cultural richness and in its strife and tensions * Guardian on Pao * A pacy but absorbing saga of domestic struggle and gangland manoeuvring set against the violent backdrop of postwar Jamaican politics * Independent on Sunday * Kerry Young tells the absorbing, uplifting story of a young woman's escape from the brutal poverty of rural Jamaica to a new life in the violent world of its capital, Kingston ... Written in the gentle, hypnotic patois and encompassing the birth pangs of Jamaican independence, this is a highly evocative portrait of a country in transition, and of one woman's search for self-awareness and self-respect * Mail on Sunday * Gloria is a brilliant, observant, sometimes complex read, but with clear and simple messages, it speaks to the feminist and equal rights campaigner in all of us ***** * Western Mail *