‘At times, Womersley’s prose is startlingly fresh, alive and direct … The Low Road achieves a smouldering tension and contains moments of rare depth and originality … this is a carefully constructed novel with considerable entertainment value for readers who appreciate bleak but intelligent and nuanced crime literature.’
Patrick Allington, Adelaide Advertiser
‘Utterly gripping.’
Michael Williams, Age
‘A book to relish.’
Steve Goerger, Antipodes (USA)
‘The Low Road… is a satisfying journey. It comes as a welcome change from the undistinguished pseudo-autobiography lately emerging from some debut novels.’
Rebecca Starford, Australian Book Review
‘As unflinching as Cormac McCarthy and as perverse as Ian McEwan, The Low Road blazes too with the lyricism of T.C. Boyle. It is a surprising and stunning debut.’
Simon Hughes, Australian Financial Review Magazine
‘The Low Road is richly and powerfully written. It is also an almost unbearably intense, tragic, and unrelentingly dark story of addiction, regret, despair, and failed dreams that left this reader mightily impressed.’
Graeme Moore, Bookseller & Publisher
‘Womersley constantly dazzles you with his evocative prose, even when he's just describing another “dingy motel at the frayed hem of the city”.’
Dazed & Confused
‘This local debut attracted attention when it was shortlisted for a Victorian Premiers Award last year. It's not hard to see why. The slow-burn revelations about both men's backgrounds, the growing sense of unease and the stark, brutal setting all conspire to make for a gripping read … Striking and assured, this a bleak thriller about guilt and redemption delivers.’
Michael Williams, Readings Monthly
‘It is difficult to believe that The Low Road is a first novel. It has the controlled pace of an experienced hand … rife with images, it unfolds like a film … Womersley’s language is polished and assured, each word precisely chosen, and every image finely constructed.’
Louise Swinn, The Age
‘Womersley’s taut, almost monosyllabic prose creates a relentless momentum as it plunges into a black dreamscape with echoes of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens, Samuel Beckett, Horace McCoy, Georges Simenon and Philip K. Dick …
‘He does not set out to solve puzzles, provide answers or fasten the ends of riddles together, though his plotting is captivating. His is an almost poetic concern for the death of people, the way there is no redemption at their end, only the sensation of a world torn from its hinge, barrelling through space …
‘Maybe it is Cormac McCarthy of whom the reader is so naggingly reminded. It’s a big call, but Womersley’s mastery of rhythm and image is, like the crusty American‘s, able to sustain complexity at the level of a sentence and a paragraph while holding the structures of his novel together … This is writing you often stop to read aloud.’
Graeme Blundell, The Australian
‘On the cover of this book are the usual claims re brilliant first novel, gripping, hypnotic, thrilling, and so on. This time you can believe every word. In some ways it's a merciless read, taking you by the throat and not letting go for a minute … Beyond all the enviable descriptions, the truly original images, the compelling pace of the sentences themselves, is the overall powerful ambivalence found in reading experiences like this, where your desire to learn about the sordid failings and shocking crimes of the characters is matched by your fear of learning something dark and disturbing about yourself.’
Debra Adelaide, The Australian
‘The Low Road is a beautifully written page-turner that remains with the reader long after its conclusion.’
Annie Condon, The Big Issue
‘This fine debut resonates long after the last page. Occasionally dark and confronting, it’s crafted with a poetic, visual sensibility.’
Lenny Bartulin, The Bulletin
'Despair and desperation abound in a mesmerising literary debut.'
Weekend Gold Coast Bulletin
'Chris Womersley's first novel is so stark and pitiless that it's hard to keep reading. But it's harder to stop.'
Gideon Haigh
‘The Low Road is an immensely powerful and gruelling novel that makes violence and the kinship of criminals seem as fascinating and inevitable as the strange workings of the interior of the body.’
Brenda Walker
