Exceptional... a beautifully crafted portrait of men slipping almost imperceptibly from childhood to middle-age...Combining the wistfulness of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones with the formal daring of David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, it's hard to imagine a better debut this year.

Forcibly reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides's hit The Virgin Suicides ... this deeply readable novel concerns itself with mysteries that are at once more mundane and more profound - innocence, longing, the winding journey to adulthood.

It's hard not to think of The Virgin Suicides when reading this novel...The tone is wistful, lustful, gossipy, guilty ... undoubtedly a writer to watch

A startling piece of work...Pittard powerfully evokes the intense contradictions of adolescence: the capacity to feel dread, boldness, vulnerability, nostalgia and desire in a single instant...It is an unflinching account of the dark undercurrents of youthful sexuality

A haunting debut with echoes of The Virgin Suicides...By turn dreamy, regretful and melancholy, the velvety prose explores "what if" territory, offering alternative endings for the missing girl.

Dreamlike...Unusual and compelling.

THE FATES WILL FIND THEIR WAY is about the way our imaginations can carry us from a dispiriting selfishness to a nascent empathy, and the way we continue to inflict-or even just observe-pain until that empathy arrives.

Impressive...A story about the dark matter of adolescent desire that pulls on the heart across decades...A Poignant testimony of male adolescence, steeped in nostalgia and regret...Chilling and touching. Pittard can be harrowingly wise about the melancholy process of growing up.

One of the most impressive aspects of The Fates Will Find Their Way is how it summons up the elements of a suburban youth...Deeply felt...At its core it's about how children become adults.

Thirwell's novel elegantly portrays the ageing Haffner's thrilling attempts to escape from lovers, the mafia, his family and himself

The writing is polished and full of allusions