"Sublime and extraordinary, the most auspicious fictional debut since Robert Coover's The Origin of the Brunists...this is a real book by a very committed writer. It may, and probably should be a long time before we have another such"
- Brian Morton in Cut"It is as if a Faulkner novel had been crossed with Whistle Down the Wind and then narrated by a stoned blues musician...extremely ambitious...the language is richly descriptive...a heady style, refreshingly free of the introverted parochialism of much of contemporary English writing"
- Daily Telegraph"After the long wait, The Ass is something of a revelation - a compelling, atmospheric narrative, with a linguistic richness verging on the baroque, and steeped in a violent, uncomfortably wry grand guignol humour"
- City Limits"The book's style, it's parables, metaphors and fetishism, give it a visionary feel - all underpinned by Bible-black humour, and it has enough visitations, portents and religious lunacy to qualify as the second-greatest story ever told."
- Elle"Cave tells his tale with the same sense of dynamics, horror and sensitivity that has made him one of the world's most acknowledged songwriters and performers...subterranean, macabre and biblical - this brilliant book is a giant."
- The Australian"Surprising, remarkable...one of the most captivating works since Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude...its literary equal"
- Terry Kay, The Atlanta Journal