Mary John

What this novella manages to do – and this is why it is first-rate literature – is to combine the particular with the universal. It rejects morality and social paradigms, bringing to life the story of a girl whose parents have separated, and who idealises a special and uncompromising relationship with her best friend and neighbour.
Andreia Brites, Blimunda magazine, December 2016

Combining the agile and intelligent prose of Ana Pessoa (author of “Supergiant”) with the wonderful illustrations of Bernardo P. Carvalho, “Mary John” is a fascinating journey through the labyrinths of adolescence, told by someone who lived it as a difficult but necessary voyage.
José Mário Silva, Expresso newspaper,  23/12/2016

Ana Pessoa is for this decade’s YA literature what Alice Vieira was for the ’80s and Ana Saldanha for the ’90s. Each of them marks a paradigm shift in terms of writing for young people.
Ana Margarida Ramos, Lecturer and researcher (University of Aveiro), 23/11/2016 

Ana Pessoa has made a clearing in the forest of Portuguese fiction aimed at young adults. (…)
More than an epistolary novel, the book ends up as something of a diary because the letter stretches out in time and swallows up the whole of the girl’s life – her search for a place of her own, a voice, a path. Ana Pessoa captures all the echoes of this discovery process in a rich, elastic, novelistic prose, all the while maintaining a genuine tone, with believable dialogues that are accessible for the book’s target audience (“for 14 upwards”, as the cover states).  It is also recommended for adults though, whether as a way to return to their own youth or simply as an example of literary excellence.
José Mário Silva, Expresso newspaper, 30/04/2017

Ana Pessoa surprises us again with this intense, captivating and unmissable story. A port of refuge for any adolescent, and one which adults should also explore.
Hipopómatos na Lua blog, 22/12/2016

Perhaps the best Young Adult book I ever read.
Blog Books & Macchiatos, 26/01/2021