There are lines in All One Breath for instance, that brand themselves into your brain with the fire of painful recognition. And yet it is also part of his genius to be ever alert to beauty, too.

One of the most charged collections I have read in a long time. [Burnside's] writing is earthed and ethereal – there is a rare equilibrium to it... Breathtaking.

John Burnside is a genius... He is constantly live to alternative possibilities and versions of himself, as close yet unreachable as his own shadow. His responses to the world are so raw, it's as if he's missing a skin – or perhaps the rest of us have grown hides to make life manageable.

Rare and memorable beauty... For all the melancholy of this collection, Burnside is not a nihilist; the glory of these poems shows us that.

Memory and self-reflection merge into elegy... Burnside is a master of the final clinching line... Across the length of whole poems and the whole book there is great wisdom about how people learn to get along with family and with their own past selves, "the backrooms of the heart"; about the limits of self and body; and about how human beings have mistaken and abused the non-human.

[Burnside] has a mysterious yet philosophical way of coming at us slant, using beautiful, light-touch descriptions of the material world.

Too often poets are portrayed as meek and mild, emollients in an age scarred by abrasiveness. John Burnside, it is a pleasure to report, is not of that genus... There is a terrible beauty to Burnside's anger.

It is a rare thing for a poet to step out of the pack and move beyond mere critical appreciation into something like the mainstream; but a new John Burnside will now fly out of the shops with unbard-like haste.

Contemporary lyric poetry is seldom better.

Full of compassion... the heartbreaking story of how two lives are derailed by a split-second mistake.

A compelling novel about the crushing restrictions that class and gender can impose, the burden of parental expectation, and the stigma attached to mental illness.

[Joyce] is a charming and skilful writer

The language [Joyce] uses is really poignant and evocative. It is so beautiful and well-crafted I didn't want it to end.

Unforgettable... a deft and original follow-up to The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

The author of last year's biggest selling debut The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry returns with a very different but equally captivating novel... This is a heartbreaking story, full of compassion, that unfolds gently but relentlessly against the backdrop of the suburban '70s. Perfect confirms [Rachel Joyce] as a major new voice.

Moving, insightful and satirical

Joyce’s last novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry was a wonderful story of an older man walking across England to say goodbye to a dying friend. It was spoken of fondly in book clubs and in reviews and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. In Perfect, Joyce has created an excellent follow up.

A cleverly-plotted tale, it is moving yet unsentimental. Sure to delight Joyce fans who made The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry a best-seller.

With Perfect, Joyce wrings another rewarding tale out of the little tragedies of life

Rachel Joyce's first novel, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, won both commercial success and wide critical acclaim (it was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize). She may just repeat the trick with Perfect, a mixture of comedy and drama in much the same vein... this is a novel with the capacity to both surprise and charm.

Out of the smallest, most delicate building blocks, Rachel Joyce gradually builds a towering sense of menace. She understands people, in all their intricacy and vulnerability, in a way few writers do. Perfect is a poignant and powerful book, rich with empathy and charged with beautiful, atmospheric writing.

Intriguing and suspenseful... Joyce, showing the same talent for adroit plot development seen in the bestselling The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, brings both narrative strands together in a shocking, redemptive denouement.

[Joyce's] sympathetically realised characters are people living on the edge, whether of loneliness, poverty or mental illness, and despite its underlying sadness, the book ends with the presage of hope.

A moving and original novel... it confirms [Joyce] as one of the most interesting voices in British fiction

A rewarding, multi-layered novel with empathy for disturbed mental states and, towards the end, a clever fast-forwarding 30 years.

Rachel Joyce's new novel is simply Perfect.

[Joyce] triumphantly returns with PERFECT…As Joyce probes the souls of Diane, Byron, and Jim, she reveals – slowly and deliberately, as if peeling back a delicate onion skin – the connection between the two stories, creating a poignant, searching tale.”

In alternating chapters, these two stories set 40 years apart frame Joyce’s exquisitely played novel of tragedy and mental illness and the kind of wrenching courage unique to those who suffer from the latter and yet battle to overcome it. As in her brilliant debut, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Joyce stuns with her beautifully realized characters and the unexpected convergence of her two tales.

Perfect touches on class, mental illness, and the ways a psyche is formed or broken. It has the tenor of a horror film, and yet at the end, in some kind of contortionist trick, the narrative unfolds into an unexpected burst of redemption. Buy It.

Joyce flings “Perfect’s” characters into chaotic situations fraught with misgivings and confusion ... Diana’s descent into terror is provocative enough to carry this story, but Joyce complements it with a contemporary one about an equally fragile man named Jim who has spent most of his life in a facility for the mentally ill. His connection to Diana will surprise many readers as Joyce spins this equally compelling subplot toward its shocking revelations and conclusion.

Better than The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry... touching [and] eccentric.

Ambitious, dark and honest