A first-rate novel

From Adam Bede to Daniel Deronda, she questioned her times. She plumbed ideas, politics, religion, race, and above all the vagaries of the heart

A disconcerting mixture of High Victorian and snappily contemporary. The sentences tend to be massive, slow-moving but deadly accurate: the characters' motivations are dissected, the moral puzzles presented with great clarity

The whole country life that the story is set in, is so real, and so droll and genuine, and yet so selected and polished by art, that I cannot praise it enough to you

Outstanding...a moving, strangely uplifting novel that grapples with the coarse substance of everyday existence and poetically celebrates its passage. Superb.

Extraordinarily involving and perceptive...a picture of a society evoked through its injured members. A most remarkable book.

Norris has a gift for tapping in to ordinary lives and finding the extraordinary in them...emotional, compelling and thought-provoking

Barney Norris’ first novel has the deep emotional power and accuracy of his admired plays, and more: a sweeping study of how, in everyone’s lives, memory and imagination may intersect with chance.

Compelling...Norris never loses sight of the love there is to be found in the world as long as one is willing to seek it out and fight to keep it.

Brilliant and multi-layered...the author has an uncanny ability to capture even the tiniest nuances of each character

Riveting

Powerful...this young writer is capable of convincing compassion

Norris writes beautifully, unearthing extraordinary depths in the everyday...a memorable writer, mature beyond his years.

Just shimmering

Remarkable...makes you thrill to be alive

A Horse Walks into a Bar is a delight.

With A Horse Walks into a Bar, Israeli writer David Grossman accomplishes the seemingly impossible and transposes an entire stand-up show into a novel. Shocking and intense, bleak but sensitive, this affecting tale is much more than novelty… A novel that probes the fullest absurdities of the human condition and our capacities to reconstitute suffering.

The thrust though is the comedian’s monologue, by turns tragic and hilarious as he subjects his audience to his story.

This is yet another masterwork from the wonderful Israeli novelist whose work resonates with emotional intelligence, humanity and truth.

Bold, brash, angry and heartbreakingly tender, with flurries of exasperated humour, here is a novel to take one by surprise… A demanding and gloriously rewarding novel, in it Grossman confronts the business of being alive.

A sensitive and deeply emotional account of a past-prime comedian… This book is an immersive read for both the fans and haters of the stand-up comedy, but tread carefully if you’re not up for an emotional rollercoaster.

The perfect antidote to Trump.

This book is a compelling study of the relationship between artist and spectator, and how suffering feeds into art, and he’s made of it a bravura performance… Extraordinary.

A haunting, intense and Man Booker International prize-winning novel from a great writer.

Incredibly fast paced, and the dialogue comes at you like a machine gun… It is powerful in its own right.

Abrasive, unexpected and eventually heartbreaking, it is a masterclass in characterisation and structure, and it beat off some exceptionally strong competition to win the prize… A Horse Walks into a Bar is quite unlike any other Grossman book except in one important respect: it’s another masterpiece.

Excellent.

Pitch-perfect black comedy