Born Free

* The writing is of a high quality and puts across a powerful sense of claustrophobia and quiet desperation. The Observer * It's desperately readable, blackly comic and painful, a delight born of dysfunction. The Times * Born Free confirms Laura Hird as one of Scotland's most talented writers. This bleak tale of urban dismay, set in the badlands of Edinburgh, is a work of considerable force and maturity - Hird organises her material with confidence and style - The novel's final 50 pages are a memorable descent into the dark mires of the human spirit, yet the book ends with a spark of optimism. Daily Telegraph * Born Free exhibits a maturity that suggests Hird has emerged from the coat-tails of her peers and has ceased to play the literary wee sister - she manages to carry things off with aplomb - Hird's portrayal of a woman in alcoholic free-fall is uncomfortably accurate - shifts with ease from the screamingly funny to the gut-wrenching - thought provoking and entertaining. The Scotsman