Winner of the Orange Prize

"This fresh, unsentimental look at what slave-owning does to (and for) one's interior life must be a first. The writing-so prised and clean limbed-is a marvel."
—Toni Morrison

"Chilling...disturbing...intriguing. A compelling contest of wills between two women...against a chaotic backdrop of black night and leaping torchlight."
—The New York Times

"Sharply observer.... A strikingly unsentimental voice.... In fewer than 200 pages, Martin is able to summon up historical landscapes her readers have never seen."
—Newsday

"Quietly devastating.... Shows a dimension of American slavery that nonfiction could not get across.... A work of sustained irony.... As chilly and arresting a picture of slavery as you'll find anywhere."
—The Boston Globe

"It is possible that we have never heard a voice like this before... a timeless, chilling voice, eerily like the voice of the German people after the Holocaust... [With it] Valerie Martin opens a window on that evil of human nature that makes one group of people less than another."
—Winston-Salem Journal

"So riveting that once you start reading this slender novel, it's unlikely you'll put it down. A bitter, mesmerizing account of the caustic costs of slavery."
—Detroit Free Press

"Confirms that Martin is a vibrant force in American fiction... Martin uncovers the violent nature of slavery, ownership and property."
—The New Orleans Times-Picayune

"A ferociously honest book [on] a subject long wrapped in 'lies without end': race in America.... Manon is a shadow sister to Scarlett O'Hara, offering [us] the unvarnished voice of her time.... [This is] fiction that can remake the way we understand ourselves."
—Salon

"Martin's explorations of character are unsparing as she reveals both Manon and Sarah in all their desperate humanity. A brave and riveting book."
—O, The Oprah Magazine

"The real achievement is that Martin leaves us wondering what 'peculiar institutions' we are embracing in our own world."
—The News & Observer

"Brilliant... chilling clarity...Property is historical fiction that is both literary and literal in that it poetically bares a truth."
—New York Daily News

"Vivid and gripping. I read it in one gulp."
—Marilyn French

"Martin's writing is graceful, controlled and precise...The breadth of Martin's interests are remarkable. She moves around flawlessly in time and space: nothing frightens her."
—Fay Weldon

"As chilling and satisfying as anything she has written. . . . A fierce and uncompromising book, a bracing and cathartic work of art."
—Chicago Tribune

"In this stunningly powerful novel, Valerie Martin's gifts-a fearless originality and seemingly limitless perspective combined with a cool and elegant intelligence-are all on splendid display."
—Barbara Gowdy

"A wonderful novel, vivid, revealing."
—Carol Shields

"[Property] is a brilliant, chillingly revelatory piece of fiction, a work of craft, economy and such good merciless observation-one of those rare, crucial novels illuminating a history we think we know and understand so that after we've read it we'll never forget its truths."
—Ali Smith

"Tightly constructed [and] suspenseful. . . . Manon is a vividly presented voice, precociously cynical, mordantly amusing, despairing. . . . A subtly cadenced novel of racial and sexual transgressions."
—The New York Review of Books

"Fraught with tension, desperation, and rage, all masterfully sustained. . . . An unflinching depiction of our nation's most shameful historical chapter."
—Los Angeles Times

"Compelling. . . . A painful yet elegant study of . . . the authority of the mighty over the deprived. . . . Astonishing."
—The Washington Post

 "Quick-paced and absorbing . . . chilling, understated and brilliant."
—The Miami Herald

"A fascinating little gem of darkness."
—San Francisco Chronicle