Ali Shaw

The Girl with Glass Feet – Reviews

“Fantastically imagined . . . Only a heart of glass would be unmoved.”     – Robin Romm, New York Times Book Review

“Shaw has worked the great tradition of European fairy tales and come up with an ingenious story . . . A magical fable of fate and resignation.”     – Guardian

“Ali Shaw has written a rare orchid of a book, beautiful and eccentric and exquisitely sad.”     – Patrick Ness, author of Monsters of Men

“Ali Shaw has created a memorable addition to [the] fabulist pantheon in his gorgeous first novel, The Girl with Glass Feet . . . Shaw acknowledges the influence of writers like Andersen, Kafka and Borges (Shaw’s menagerie of perfectly detailed, marvelous creatures could have stepped from the pages of “The Book of Imaginary Beings”). But it’s Andersen’s melancholy tales, steeped in loss and a brooding sense of fatedness, that shimmer around the edges of The Girl with Glass Feet.”     – Elizabeth Hand, Washington Post

The Girl with Glass Feet is a love story, not just about two people falling in love, but also about love itself: its power, its limits, and its consequences. . . . Full of magical surprises.”     – Buzzy Jackson, The Boston Globe

“At heart it’s a sincere but unsentimental love story . . . The dreamy atmosphere curls around you until you see, hear and smell the moors and bogs. . . . The ending bridges the gap between fairy tales old and new.”     – Lisa McLendon, Wichita Eagle

“Whether you read it as science fiction, fairy tale, fable, allegory, mystery or magical realism, The Girl With Glass Feet is weirdly beautiful and highly entertaining.”     – Pamela Miller, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

“Ali Shaw shows immense promise with his deft use of language, which sings in a book that is at its heart filled with sadness. The soft light on the island plays coyly with the thick vegetation, casting glorious shadows and producing a riot of images all ably captured by Midas’ camera and Shaw’s prose.”     – Vikram Johri, The Chicago Sun-Times

“Ali Shaw has a gift for storytelling and an obvious love of language. His descriptions are poetic and original. . . . The Girl With Glass Feet is a work of great imagination and talent.”     – Corinna Lothar, The Washington Times

“The cold northern islands of St. Hauda’s Land are home to strange creatures and intertwining human secrets in Shaw’s earnest, magic-tinged debut. . . . Shaw’s novel flows gracefully and is wonderfully dreamlike, with the danger of the islands matched by the characters’ dark pasts.”     – Publishers Weekly

“Ali Shaw offers the rare delight of a world freshly and richly imagined. . . . The story is soothingly spellbinding, pulling the reader with steady delicacy into the hearts and minds of its characters amid the enthralling murmur of the fantastical.”     – Ariel Berg, The San Francisco Book Review

“This lovely fable is a chain of linked mysteries with accelerating suspense that propels the reader deep into Shaw’s world of marvels. That world is crafted with elegance and swept by passionate magic and the yearning for connection. A rare pleasure.”     – Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

“Written in the tradition of magical realists like Haruki Murakami and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Girl with Glass Feet is a singular, slippery narrative that defies easy categorization. Shaw writes finely honed prose and knows how to wring maximum suspense out of a tightly woven plot. His is an accomplished first novel—a hypnotic book with an atmosphere all its own.”     – Julie Hale, Bookpage

“Emotional entanglements on a faraway frozen island are shaped by romance and tragedy in a melancholic yet whimsical British debut. . . . [A] strikingly visual novel. . . . captivatingly ethereal.”     – Kirkus Reviews

“Combining magic realism, the conventions of a romance novel, and a British sense of practicality, this charming first novel creates a new fable.”     – Booklist

The Girl with Glass Feet is not just special—it’s remarkable. . . . [This] debut novel conjures up the extraordinary and fantastic, yet places it firmly in our digital world. . . . It’s a very visual novel—readers who enjoy using their imagination will adore it.”     – Helen Peacock, The Oxford Times

“A haunting and magical tale. . . . One of the most original and memorable love stories I’ve read in a long time. . . . It takes a real talent to create such an imaginative setting yet still make readers believe and care about the characters, but first-time novelist Ali Shaw pulls it off in dazzling style, spinning an unforgettable story so vividly described that the reader is only too willing to suspend disbelief in order to be transported into his sad and lovely world.”     – Morag Lindsay, Aberdeen Press and Journal