An experimental novel by a Norwegian veteran, who is loved by Karl Ove Knausgaard, Haruki Murakami and Peter Handke… Very unusual – and in the end, very deep.

Solstad is expert in delineating the absurdities of existence… Solstad exposes us to ourselves. [T]he reader is deeply rewarded in the end.

Solstad's novels are full of dryly comic, densely existential despair . . . Death occupies the space between each of the footnotes that make up the corpus of Armand V, but what Solstad ultimately celebrates in it is the freedom of the novelist, and of the novel form.

Solstad describes Armand V as a series of “ongoing but distorted footnotes to an unwritten novel”. That sounds experimental but it soon feels as comfortable as a pair of old suede shoes. After about 30 pages Solstad mentions how, in the composition of a novel, he becomes conscious of the point, sometimes 30 or 40 pages back, when “the whole thing went off the rails”. He then starts over from that point, implicitly to get it back on the rails. It’s an extraordinary claim. I mean, the idea that, for Solstad, a novel needs rails. In his weirdly hypnotic way isn’t this what he is always railing against?

All of the whispers have been right: Solstad is a vital novelist.

He’s a kind of surrealistic writer... I think that’s serious literature.

His language sparkles with its new old-fashioned elegance.

He doesn’t write to please other people... Do exactly what you want, that’s my idea… the drama exists in his voice, in his comments and views, and that works, it helps connect the reader to the story.

In Norway, Solstad is as celebrated as, say, Don DeLillo or Toni Morrison [in the US]... An utterly hypnotic and utterly humane writer.

Without question Norway's bravest, most intelligent novelist.

Classic Roddy Doyle, but with a shocking twist… The novel rewinds leisurely through the previous 40 years of Victor’s life. Schooldays are vicious, terrifying and strangely thrilling… Doyle’s recreation of 1970s and 1980s Dublin is engaging in itself, even as you’re wondering what went wrong in Victor’s life… But then comes the devastating and comfortless finale, in which Doyle conjures up a mind-bending narrative swerve to jolt the novel out of everyday realism… By the end, the book’s title takes on the air of a taunt as we’re left with an unutterably bleak picture of institutional abuse, entirely without hope.

So the great part of the novel is a finely observed and recorded slice of unsatisfactory life… Then, in an astonishing last chapter, when Victor and Fitzpatrick seem to come drunkenly and violently together, Doyle turns the novel on its head, clarifying Victor’s memories of school and calling everything we thought we had learned about him into question. The ending is a daring tour-de-force.

Anyone who has been to a boy’s Catholic school – even years after the decline of corporal punishment and institutionalised sexual abuse that the book makes its focal point – will be vividly reminded. Few writers are as consistently good as Doyle at conjuring this specific childhood mental geography… Dialogue, narrative pacing, humour and marvelous set pieces are immaculately marshalled throughout Smile.

Smile is brisk-paced and funny with the chatty storytelling that is a hallmark of Doyle’s writing. But here the familiar heads into dark and unexpected territory as the secrets of Victor’s troubled psyche are revealed.

All of this is told in Doyle’s easy, pared down prose and demotic dialogue that just sings. He remains the best kind of populist author; accessible and ambitious.

Roddy Doyle has a kind of genius for the literary selfie, for projecting himself and his generation onto the page. His novels, including his latest, Smile, are a brilliant depiction of the condition of men such as he – liberal, self-made Dubliners of is generation and his self-deprecating character – he’s approaching 60. His male conversations in pubs… are masterly in that they sound like transcripts of real men talking… There’s genius in his banality.

Smile’s grimy, unsentimental truth-telling is overturned at the end by a devastating narrative twist… It actually serves to magnify, not obscure, this hugely moving tale of a ravaged life.

No one is better than Doyle at capturing the casual rudeness, hidden affection and dark wit of pub banter… What Roddy Doyle is attempting here is something much more ambitious, a book which, when you come to the final page, makes you gasp and turn straight back to the beginning… What is certain is that this is a novel which isn’t afraid to examine the consequences of abuse; what a long and permanent stain it may cast over a man’s entire life. Nor does it shy away from how a mind unhinged can secure itself to celebrity in search of self-esteem and meaning.

Roddy Doyle’s ostensibly simplistic, effortless style mines the depths of human emotion without recourse to any pretension, literary or otherwise. He is the Beatles of Irish literature. His dialogue is tuneful to a fault – capturing not only the wit, but also the woeful banality of daily chat. I read The Van at an early age and took it from there; his familiar and instantly engaging style is music to my ears. His latest novel, Smile, is a great pleasure to read. Here again his genius is apparent, this time on the obscure functioning of male friendships.

Smile shapes up as a bittersweet story, typically well-observed and smartly-voiced, of a middle-aged, moderately screwed-up guy whose separation and solitude sends him on a journey through memory towards the sufferings of his childhood. Then, for all the assurance that nothing “supernatural” has happened, the floorboards of social realism suddenly give way beneath our feet. Shockingly, we’re in an uncanny place that might have been furnished by Henry James at his spookiest.

This book is a brutal confrontation with reality… The plot twist in the book’s final pages is genuinely shocking… But with it the book is elevated to a brilliant and deeply moving level. Finally, this is a compelling exploration of the utter devastation of institutional abuse.

Smile is an undoubtedly fine novel, displaying Doyle’s famed mastery of dialogue and ventriloquist-like ability to assume the identities of his characters… The novel’s strength lies in Doyle’s precise yet impressionistic evocation of the workings of memory and trauma. Childhood trauma is rendered in a manner that is at once harshly exact and vexingly evasive… Doyle’s prose is both impeccable and confounding, leading the reader into folly as much as clarification… A timely and stunningly poignant novel wrought with great wit and pathos.

This is an unsettling and ultimately bleak examination of institutionalised abuse in Ireland, a subject which offers very little to smile about.

Achingly sad and ruefully perceptive, exquisitely balancing anger with sympathy.

With a queasily gripping, insidiously sad narrative, and an ending that completely rewires everything you thought you knew, Doyle delivers through the paralysed character of Victor a devastating verdict on present-day Ireland, still imprisoned by an ugly past.

There’s a moment right at the start of Roddy Doyle’s new book, Smile, that will make you shiver – dark undercurrents under a banal exterior… More experimental in form, and with less humour than you might expect from Doyle, Smile is the 59-year-old author’s attempt to shake us out of complacency… For my part, the book’s triumph rests on Doyle’s ability to reflect how Victor’s experience of abuse has unmoored him from the people around him.

In a sharply observed novel, Doyle explores memory, relationships and sanity.

Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humour and the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before.

The final pages of the novel are shocking, and they turn everything preceding it on its head. It’s testament to the power of Doyle’s writing that the ending is deeply moving, and so very sad.

One that stuck with me for a long, long time after I had finished it… This is one of my favourite books of the year so far. How the story ultimately plays out left me satisfied, cold and off-balance. A rare thing.

A surprise. It’s unsettling and evocative, but not what you’d expect from the beloved author… The wit and sharp dialogue are classic Doyle, but the dark, unexpected ending will linger long in the mind. A brilliant read.

Who writes the lives, hopes, dreams, sorrows and failures of ordinary people with greater insight, empathy and humanity than Roddy Doyle?... It’s as profound, funny, sad and shocking as anything Roddy has ever written.

So cleverly written we are caught up in the narrative and the final reveal is deeply disturbing. Doyle has again proved himself an author who can create the sense of time and place that takes the reader into the backstreet bars of Dublin and shows the dangerous undertow of life in Ireland.

This is a performance few writers could carry off: a novel constructed entirely from bar stool chatter and scraps of memory. But you can’t turn away. It’s like watching a building collapse in slow motion… Doyle has perfected a narrative technique that’s elliptical without feeling coy.

[Doyle] experiments with time, adding an edgy dream-like quality to the writing… There is no shortage of the author’s trademark dialogue where the men chat about their favourite topics, basically pilfering of Doyle’s own Two Pints Facebook wheeze… Smile is a precise perceptive study of male vulnerability and quietly portrays the stunted life of a lonely, damaged man.

It’s a captivating story that has all the features his readers love him for: razor-sharp dialogue, humour and warm evocations.

In contrast to the manic colloquial energy of Doyle’s early work, this novel, his eleventh, feels moody and spare – a meditation on how wisdom wounds.

An unforgettable journey into Ireland’s darkest past.

A welcome return to form by the master of bittersweet black comedy, dialogue and drama… A profoundly moving, occasionally disturbing and important read.

A profound examination of the stories we tell other people – and ourselves.

Fans of Doyle's previous bestsellers, including The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, will not be disappointed.

Doyle captures the febrile atmosphere of being at school perfectly

A raw, powerful and compelling story

Magnificent.

Nothing in the world of this novel is ever redundant; nothing is accidental. Whenever you come across a striking detail…you can be sure it will crop up again, be charged with more significance, be joined with the rest of the story in a long chain of meaning.

Mesmerising.

Ondaatje’s first novel in seven years is also one of his best – a quiet but profoundly powerful book… A superior, espionage novel about the unstable, shape-shifting nature of personal history.

The evocation of night journeys through the fog-bound city and along mysterious canals and forgotten rivers is spellbinding.

Michael Ondaatje’s Warlight is one of the best books I’ve read in years. I’d pick it up again in a heartbeat.

Ondaatje’s prose is beautiful, and he successfully builds suspense and tension without seeming too heavy-handed

Michael Ondaatje is at his best when writing about awkward, quiet types

Brilliant dramatic tale

Ondaatje’s prose is consistently illuminating. Warlight is a meditation on the purpose and possibilities of storytelling

[T]his elegiac novel combines the stealth of an espionage thriller with the irresolute shift of a memory play, purposefully full of fragments, loss and unfinished stories. Wonderful

Warlight is a subtly thrilling story… It's a masterful book

[C]ompulsively and grippingly readable… Ondaatje is a marvelous writer, and Warlight is a novel which will continue to play in the reader’s imagination

For the lyrical strength of the prose alone, a new Michael Ondaatje novel is always a treat

Warlight is a layered, precisely written, erudite meditation on the damage we do when we make war

In Warlight we have a writer who knows exactly what he’s doing – and has constructed something of real emotional and psychological heft, delicate melancholy and yet, frequently, page-turning plottiness. I haven’t read a better novel this year

[Ondaatje’s] prose has a haunting musicality, which George Blagden brings out to the full.

Kushner’s writing is the most marvellous I read this year… time and again I found myself rereading paragraphs of The Mars Room for her perfectly turned sentences, the music of her prose