'Opening with a child's-eye view, [Donkey's Years] incorporates local history and topography, evoking with vivid, physical detail the voices of his playmates, the smells, colours and sounds of this peaceful corner of Ireland in the 1930s and '40s...It comes as no surprise that Aidan Higgins...has written an autobiography that has the texture of a novel' Irish Times

'Leaving down Donkey's Years at four in the morning after one straight reading I felt exhilarated...Read it and see. Few books inspire like this' Dermot Healy

'The best book since Langrishe. It's absolutely wonderful. He is still (and always was) the best English-language prose stylist in the country' Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill

'Donkey's Years must rank as one of the finest books in English since the War' The Phoenix