"For in many ways, Goldsworthy's impressively subtle and even-handed book is both a product of and a tribute to those same contradictions, demanding readers look beyond Adelaide's often deceptive surfaces and understand the hidden currents that have shaped its deeply idiosyncratic culture. Like its predecessors in NewSouth's cities series, Goldsworthy's book is as much personal essay as public document, a reflection on memory and place exploring the complex bonds that tie us to the places we call home, the profusion of images and sensations and memories that constitute our understanding, not just of where we came from, but of who we are."
The Sydney Morning Herald 

"Adelaide is a text that will give visitors, both actual and armchair, real insight into this city, a navigational device with which they may discern the complex map of narratives and sensibilities that lies beneath the simple geometry of the Adelaide grid....Adelaide is a work of dazzling beauty and clarity that provides the reader with a vision of this city as unique and profound as any that has helped to shape it."
The Adelaide Review

"Kerryn Goldsworthy's clearly evident affection for Adelaide does not blind her to the less than loveable features of a provincial capital still groping its way toward proper cityhood. She is good on the founding fathers, into whom she breathes surprising life, and on Adelaide's plentiful cultural offerings; she has some pungent remarks on its stifling summer heat. Her prose is rich and effortless, suffused with memories of her own childhood and youth. Her book will be a boon to discerning visitors, and has much to teach the locals too."
JM Coetzee