"THIS is Delia Falconer's Sydney. She journeys through time and space (both hers and her city's) as an explorer, gentle companion and confidant to the ghosts of its swaggering history. This soul travel gives the book both its allure and alienation. Falconer writes beautifully and evocatively in what is a long love letter to her home town, as she delves deep into its essence. But it is in the depths that she changes, like an alchemist, the city's meaning. Perception is all. Many Sydneysiders may not recognise, or have empathy, with this place...Falconer's Sydney dazzles. You can see the city's showers of light, its clashes of lightning, its thunder teeming. Such is her skill, the elements shear off their axes. You can feel the crush of heat and humidity on your skin in summer, and the cleansing when a tempest sweeps through and washes the city clean."
The Age 

"Delia Falconer's Sydney...is like its harbour, brimful with tones, vivid with contemplation."
Australian Book Review

"[Falconer's] arguments about the sombre undercurrents of Sydney are more delicate than I can give here, but she has succeeded in doing something no other writer has achieved in writing about Sydney: she has given it a melancholic and spectral seriousness that for far too long has been hidden under tinsel and fairy lights. In other words, she has given the city a unique, mythic dimension. This is a brilliant book. If I were to recommend a book about Sydney to anyone, it would be this one."
Louis Nowra, The Australian

"Falconer's Sydney depicts a city of beauty and violence, of pain and redemption. Whatever your relationship with Sydney, put aside your entrenched preconceptions and explore this book. It may not change your opinion of Australia's largest city, but I'm certain this book will give you a new perspective on our first city"
The Canberra Times