Masterful, delightfully controlled prose...This highly engaging novel continues to reveal itself long after it is read

Carefully unsentimental...remarkable...we are given the complicated substance of unadorned lives

Compelling... A daring work, sure to gain her greater recognition..the portrait of the ex-soldier Joseph is as fine a depiction of a man in crisis as you will read

A remarkable feat... precise and searing... One of the most intelligent and ethical writers of her generation

Elegant... Authentic... One of the significant accomplishments of Afterwards is a coiling suspense driven more by psychology than circumstance

[Afterwards] is about invisible borders, the hard-held Irish border, the border between lovers, between generations, between past and present. It is a fine and profound work

Seiffert returns to many of the themes of her first novel, The Dark Room: guilt, grief, memory and forgetting. But Afterwards also asks the questions about how much people can really know about the people they love

Superb...the drama is balanced and the tension sustained...masterful

Readers who wonder why... Martin Amis and... Kiran Desai seem to flinch from writing about their own times should study Ms Seiffert

Rachel Seiffert is the poet and spokeswoman of those who find themselves on the wrong side of history...powerful, almost unbearably intense and wonderfully written

A quietly ambitious book

Despite the halting, low-key narration as Joe and Alice attempt to piece together the terms of their engagement, a simmering tension builds, though Seiffert is admirably less concerned with the revelation of atrocities than in how the soldier, having breached the first commandment, negotiates a return to ordinary life

A beautifully written book with moments of real sadness, hope, laughter, tragedy and joy, which make you appreciate all the little things you love, as your eyes brim with tears

A beautifully-crafted, heart-breaking look at love and loss

Another must is If I Stay by Gayle Foreman, which deals with deep, universal emotions and unpicks the truth about moving on after unspeakable loss - a fresh and compelling piece of work

A heartbreaking and beautifully written novel that should be a must-read for everyone. I doubt anyone who reads this will get to the end dry-eyed. Stock up the tissues!

If I Stay makes you appreciate what you have, all that you've lost and all that might be

A beautifully written book with moments of real sadness, hope and joy