Powerful and affecting…Captures a five-year-old’s consciousness with rare, almost mystical intensity, this is a vivid, original and generous-hearted book.

An exquisite tale of idealism and disintegration…Utterly absorbing.

Richly peopled and ambitious and oh, so lovely, Lauren Groff's Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I've read in a long time. It's not possible to write any better without showing off.

The raw beauty of Ms. Groff’s prose is one of the best things about Arcadia ... stunningly sensual and visceral in describing behaviour straight out of a time capsule… extraordinarily rich imagination, she writes about this life as if she has known it.

Groff is a sensuous writer.

Intricately wrought ... A powerful paean to the human desire to make the right sort of place to live.

Smart, beautiful, rooted in an earthy and glorious location ... Groff’s beautifully written Arcadia paints a lyrical picture ... You fall in love with Arcadia’s protagonist, Bit, and find yourself transported to a different time, place and lifestyle.

Arcadia, her second novel, cements all of Groff’s promise, and then some…Deft-structural and convincing authorial control…Wonderful stuff.

With Arcadia, Groff has woven her own tale, in eloquent prose that’s rich in sense of place and depth of feeling

The novel’s greatest strength is its vision of the violent fecundity of nature…Groff excels in writing with a kind of fairy-tale lucidity…The book’s structure and imagery are full of delightful intricacies and cruel ironies.

One of our most talented writers, and Arcadia one of the most revelatory, magical and ambitious novels I've read in years.

Deeply immersive, atmospheric, and a true love letter to gothic fiction. An impressive, standout debut, sure to leave readers on the edge of their seats

Incredibly rich prose in this absorbing, deeply atmospheric story of governess, Margaret Lennox. A brilliant love letter to classic Victorian fiction and a standout debut

Dark, twisty, gothic and full of surprises ... a deliciously atmospheric page-turner

A real blast...I really enjoyed this haunting, gothic tale

A globe-trotting adventure through the 19th century

Boyd's pile-up of set piece escapades offers a huge amount of fun

Boyd's books are so enjoyable that it's hard for us to resent the tricks being played on us, even as we find ourselves constantly reaching for Google, wanting to know what is and isn't real

There's a cornucopia of fine things here . . . The Romantic, always enjoyable, ranks with two of his best: The New Confessions and Any Human Heart. Both were intelligent and engrossing, novels you lived with. Both told a fine story very well. The Romantic does just that

A ripping yarn. And as such, it is pretty much faultless: as moreish as good chocolate, terrifically entertaining, and deeply humane

A huge amount of fun

One of our best contemporary storytellers

A narrative that Charles Dickens or Jane Austen would surely have been happy to claim as their own . . . there's a joy to Boyd's storytelling throughout and his hero is one to cheer for

A wonderful tale that spans a life of adventure, this is storytelling at its very best

Crammed with incident, the novel has the wonderfully freewheeling quality that one associates with the great 19th-century novelists. As with most of Boyd's works, it manages to be warm-hearted and deliciously sardonic at the same time

William Boyd taps into the classic novel tradition with this sweeping tale of one man's century-spanning life

There is no doubt that Boyd is a masterful storyteller . . . this is a book to get totally, utterly and delightfully lost in

A new novel by William Boyd is always a treat and in his picaresque latest, The Romantic, his hero is Cashel Greville Ross, born in 1799, a soldier, lover, friend of poets, bankrupt and adventurer who is swept into many of the most important episodes of the 19th century

This highly entertaining, engrossing page-turner is the fictionalised biography of Cashel Greville Ross, who was born in 1799 in Scotland and brought up in Cork. Such is William Boyd's mastery as a storyteller, one begins to believe that all of the events are entirely real

The Romantic is a rollicking read that will delight his many fans

A wild ride across the 19th century on the back of a narrative that never pauses for breath . . . this breakneck pace seems to be a function of Boyd's exceptional imaginative facility, which sees him just as irresistibly drawn to new ideas as his hero is

What could be more reassuring in troubling times than a new William Boyd novel? Trio is immensely readable, its descriptions full of light and colour, its humour spot on, its mood a perfect mix of frolicsome and melancholy

Reading William Boyd's Trio is like shrugging on a worn leather jacket on the first brisk morning of autumn: cosy but cool . . . He has enormous fun with the worlds - and egos - of page and screen

Breakneck pace seems to be a function of Boyd's exceptional imaginative facility, which sees him just as irresistibly drawn to new ideas as his hero is . . . there's something irresistible about that energy . . . if a whole-life novel is intended to represent the span of a unique existence, then The Romantic gets it right

The Romantic is a whole-life novel, a form in which Boyd excels . . . a terrific read