For all its complexity, My Struggle achieves something pretty simple, the thing that enduring fiction has always done: it creates a world that absorbs you utterly… The End is alive.

Knausgaard’s rendering of this crisis – the jitteriness, the relentlessness with which he goes over events again and again, his overwhelming sense of transgression and shame – is riveting… Every changed nappy, every cigarette smoked on the balcony, every cup of coffee poured from that damn vacuum jug is another alibi; the creation of the normal life that distracts from the roiling mess within... That we cannot quite name what we’ve experienced is part of the brilliance.

The End is woven of a man’s love for his family and his obsession with the solitary writing life, the warp and weft of these contradictory passions sometimes meshing together perfectly… My Struggle is a cultural moment worth getting involved in. The six volumes offer something special: total immersion in the soap opera of another person’s life.

A uniquely compelling and absorbing reading experience… captivating interplay between banality and beauty, the redundant and the sublime.

Compulsively addictive… His way of describing “reality as it is” is to expand the range of thoughts and actions, however mundane or shameful, that a human being will publicly admit to.

This central tension, between the needs of the artist and the need of the husband and father, one that has coursed through My Struggle’s thousands of pages, Knausgaard appears to bring to a moving, wholly fitting resolution… its totality, its absolute commitment to its own ideals, make it – and the whole sequence – a mesmerising, thought-provoking and genuinely important work of art.

A daring end to a brilliant series... I will read this series again and again.

It is hard not to be impressed by the fluency and erudition on display as Knausgaard charts his course through history, philosophy, literature and the visual arts… In the end, reality does not break down under Knausgaard’s gaze. We are left instead with the world as it is: the click of a seatbelt, the shock of melted margarine, the centuries slipping away in Rembrandt’s eyes.

The inner conflicts swirling around exert a gravitational pull on the reader, the challenges of empathy becoming universal through their particularity. Over and over, he asserts something fundamental to literature, art and life… these books will endure.

My Struggle just keeps coming at you, much as life does… Knausgaard succeeds in producing prose that is "alive", partly because of his eye for detail and partly because of the quality of his intellect.

[My Struggle] is arguably the most important literary event of the 21st century...it’s also worth reflecting on just how valuable these books can be. They are, among other things, uniquely candid about male shame, which makes them a highly valuable guide to modern masculinity.

The End is worth the wait… his life is now destined to stand in the shadow of this truly monumental six-volume literary achievement. And perhaps there is no greater mark of artistic success than that.

The “unartiness” is the most striking element of Knausgaard’s project. The impression of randomness and spontaneity… Knausgaard’s abandonment of fictional convention was particularly disruptive because he executed it in a realm where the strictures of artifice are most rigidly codified: domestic realism… Enthralling… The final passages of My Struggle are guilt-ridden and heartbreaking.

[The End] has a bone-dry wit, a certain knowingness about the project’s grandiose archetypes… [Knausgaard] laments the gulf between vaulting ambition and its haphazard realisation.

Shteyngart's comic energy is well deployed on the ridiculously rich, especially amid Trump's campaign and his election by, perhaps, many Greyhound riders.

A considered debut which grapples with themes of pain and memory ... though the premise sounds dark, the novel's light and accessible voice provides a refreshing take on council estate life.

This won't disappoint

A great thing to read

A resonant, insightful look at the way the truths of the past can challenge the promise of the future

The novel centres on 18-year-old Ravine, bedridden since a traumatic incident involving her best friend on a Leicester council estate ... There is a freshness to the writing

A moving tale

Simultaneously fabulous and tragic, Swan Song is an incredibly accomplished debut

Our generation’s The Secret History

Triumphant debut…remarkable

A vivid debut … based on ten years of research, this is a dazzling read that’s been worth the wait

Stunning... It’s probably one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever owned

Hypnotically fascinating

The book is dripping with atmosphere and character and is such a pleasure to read.

Pure pleasure

She deftly gives us an insight into their inner lives... while creating defined personalities that resonate and intrigue. Lyrical and fascinating, the fact that this is Greenberg-Jephcott's debut is astounding.

A stunning debut novel that seamlessly blends history, fact and fiction in this imaginative re-telling of the life of novelist Truman Capote

A brilliant first novel

A slick debut pulled off with brio, Swan Song is glamorous, vivid and sometimes even daring in its intelligence

A dazzling read

Greenberg-Jephcott’s debut is fizzing with energy and ideas…The novel has style and substance in spades.

With a grounding in history, it is a fascinating read about the deepest secrets of an iconic author.

Intoxicating

Swan Song is utterly divine.It swept me up and I just couldn't put it down ... it is the writing in this debut novel that astounds most of all. It is vivid, addictive and whips up a terrific portrait of a deeply contradictory and complex man, contrasting scenes from his unorthodox childhood with those from the gilded bubble he ended up in that he lanced through his own actions.

A sumptuous look at the icons of Manhattan's high society scene in the mid-20th century ... An immersive readthat will have you questioning real histories versus the ones we create for ourselves.

He offers the reader a masterful study of a mind devoted to fairness… The Children Act is also a fascinating, painstakingly researched look inside the judicial process… Conveyed in crisp prose, this attention to detail elevates the moral conundrums…beyond the sensationalism lesser authors might have pursued. It is, in all respects, a novel that is carefully judged.

It explores the tension between cool-headed secularism and ardent belief. It is at times preposterous – and yet it has a magical readability and is slender enough to read in one intense, absorbing sitting.

In typical McEwan style, The Children Act is unputdownable and hauntingly beautiful.

The Children Act is a…sophisticated exploration of how society treats children and how children’s welfare can be considered in the complex world in which we live, where issues about how children should be raised are not subject to consensus.

If you have any unanswered letters on your desk, McEwan’s latest will have you grabbing your pen pronto.

The Children Act shows McEwan as a master of fiction who strives to teach us how to live.

Powerful and moving.

Taut, sparing and effortless, this is another exquisitely wrought novel from the master of the novella.

A subtly musical arrangement of urgently topical issues…it may be read at a sitting, but resonates for much longer.

It’s absorbing and, almost a novella, it doesn’t outstay its welcome.

Definitely one of the best books I have read this year.

This is a wonderful read with sharp, crystalline prose and, together with a superb moral dilemma, this is a beautiful and moving story.

Offering a window into a compelling world of life or death dilemmas, this is told in prose as polished as you’d expect.

The book is bursting of beautiful writing. You’ll want to read it all over again.

A story of human behavior told in a raw, uncluttered, unforgiving way.

Renowned author McEwan manages to surprise throughout this book, right to the last page.

A story of human behavior told in a raw, uncluttered, unforgiving way – and we could all have done with another couple of hundred pages.

McEwan writes in taut, sparing and effortless prose.

Ian McEwan writes stories of exquisite precision and clarity. This one is ace.

A page-turning novel

As one has come to expect, McEwan sets up the moral issues with delicacy and precision.

Ian McEwan is at his most compelling with the story of Fiona Maye… Awesome

A wonderfully readable and thought-provoking book

A short novel that will linger in your mind for a long time

Another beautifully written masterpiece

relevant, emotive, moving, this is beautifully written and a guaranteed page turner

One of our best authors at his best.

One of my favourite authors… McEwan’s fascination with judicial issues, with music and poetry, and with the moral conundrum of how far you place your religious beliefs above the life of someone you love, all feature in this book which will leave you thinking long after you have finished it.

It's an enjoyable and often surprising novella.

It asks fundamental questions in a sober, intelligent way about the choices we make and our blindness when it comes to our beliefs.

Here he is again: vulnerable, insightful, passionate and utterly in control. He’s amazing.