Professor Jen Web (University of Canberra) said on a Facebook post to Moya that one of Moya's past books, Small Ecstasies, was 'extraordinary, and it changed [Web's] life'.
Professor Nicholas Jose (English and Creative Writing University of Adelaide, former (second) Chair of Creative Writing at Adelaide, Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard): in the Sydney Review of Books:
- 'Harriet Chandler defies the conventions of authorship, among them the idea that a literary work springs fully formed from its creator’s genius, without sources or habitat .... [a] brilliant, beautiful book .... I "could not put ... down" ... self-identified "experimental" .... The idiosyncratic wit of the writing is the agent of a critique that de-legitimates cultural values and questions judgements, and understands that the domestic and recreational are economic activities too. The emotions here are different: sharp, buoyant moods; hilarious exchanges; ecstatic uplift that is sensual and intelligent at the same time .... It appeals to me not least because Costello knows what she is doing in relation to the various possibilities for fiction in Australia, past and present ... Costello never writes a sentence that isn’t interesting. She is unafraid of asymmetry and fracture. On every page are passages to mark and remember, language that appeals.'
- Jose's essay has now been published (2017) in the collection of essays from Sydney Review of Books: Australian Face: Essays from the Sydney Review of Books from Giramondo.
Anna Couani, writer and visual artist, has written a review for Rochford Street Press in October 2015: 'Costello certainly employs experimental/innovative ideas in her work but has moved on ... into what she calls eco-criticism or eco-fiction, seeing this project as a political act that addresses the environmental problems of the planet .... Like her academic writing, this novella is thoughtful and highly wrought ....The strength of Costello’s novella is that plot is almost absent and not imposed artificially on the material that she obviously wants the reader to deal with .... Moya Costello takes the Harriet Chandler character that was in Holden’s Performance a “creation of a masculine fantasy” (in [Ivor] Indyk’s words) and placed her front and centre, amazingly recuperated as a feminist heroine. Some kind of magic! .... Harriet Chandler is a work that will take its place in the tradition of innovative Australian feminist literature but also provides a new take on nature writing and writing on the Australian landscape.'
Julienne van Loon, writer and academic, wrote a review of Harriet Chandler in TEXT April 2015: 'Costello has continued to publish ... adventurous, humorous, genre-defying prose ... and she has also made a significant contribution over three decades as an editor of several influential and interesting anthologies ... It is often the practice of immersion in art-making or the contemplating of art that brings us closest to Harriet, and to Costello’s best skills as an author ... Costello’s text is not necessarily fitting anybody else’s generic mold. This is actually its key strength.'
joanne burns, poet: 'the pdf extract i read was dazzling!' (personal communication)
Shanghai Daily (Feb 1, 2015): 'Harriet Chandler lives and shines in Australian writer Moya Costello’s fictional biography. The character is reminiscent of feminist Sybylla Melvyn in Miles Franklin’s best-known novel My Brilliant Career .... Costello’s Harriet Chandler is a compelling portrait ...' from Xu Qin, Shanghai Daily
Writer, Virginia Barratt: 'It's very dense, in terms of the layers of cultural context and personal history and the ficto/bio life/lives of Harriet. And oh so lovely and evocative to read about Sydney's coastline.' Personal Communication.
PhD Candidate in Creative Writing at Wollongong University, Sally Evans: tweeting on Moya Costello's presentation at the Contemporary Women Writers' Association conference in Melbourne . July 4 2014
Reader, Jeff Williams: 'It's a song to Sydney'. 'It's a portrait of the artist as a young woman.' Personal communications.
Reader/Writer/Publisher Bronwyn Mehan of Spineless Wonders commented on Facebook in a reply to what she was reading Christmas 2014: 'Top of my list is Moya Costello's Harriet Chandler which I think you would find interesting [name of friend].' And in her blog for Meanjin, October 2014, she noted she had Costello as one of her 'fictional pleasures' or bedside reading, and that in her own fantasy book, The Contemporary Short Australian Story: Forms and Issues (working title only), she would have responses from teachers such as Costello.
Reader/writer Mary-Jane Gibson messaged on Facebook: 'in awe of your book, you are a great awesome writer, and, even though I' hadn't read the references, I loved it.'
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