The opening of Julia Frank's novel is among the most powerful in recent years, a narrative so assured that the reader is gripped...This is a great, big silence-breaker of a novel, a laser beam into the German darkness from a writer who, one feels, has a great deal more to say

Franck's command of the language of misery and loss is awesome, but so is her gift for describing the warmth of burgeoning life when things are going right

One of the most haunting works I have ever read about 20th century Germany...The book's moral perspective is faultless, as is Franck's sensitivity to character, sexuality and the struggle to be a free woman in a fascist society...The Blind Side of the Heart is a masterpiece

It is not surprising that this book won the German Book Prize... It is a rich moving and complex novel

Elegant novel ... Franck's great strength is her ability to place her characters in unenviable situations yet retain the reader's sympathy

There is a relentless sense of purpose about the complex, ever-shifting narrative that continually tests the reader

Heart-rending

It is an admirable book and in its best passages is inspired and haunting

Generations of women survive, most movingly, in the wreckage left by total war

Beautifully constructed... Franck has a remarkable ability to capture the nuances of human behaviour,and her subtle depiction of Helene's growing coldness, or "blindness", and the wider blindness of a society heading for disaster, is utterly compelling

Read it and weep

With its intriguing plot and strong characterisation, Julia Franck's novel depicts beautifully both personal and historical tragedies, and gives us a compelling portrait of a remarkable woman in difficult times

A rich, affecting novel

A witch's brew of eerie power and startling novelty

A marvellous elucidation of life ... a story full of craft and full of mystery

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour