From the first page to the last, there is a goodness to this novel, a tenacious belief in love and the redemptive power of human connection, unfettered by institutions and conventions. This belief, combined with good old-fashioned storytelling, is surely why Irving is so often described as Dickensian. But John Irving is his own thing, and so is his new novel. Avenue of Mysteries is thoroughly modern, accessibly brainy, hilariously eccentric and beautifully human.

Irving has packed so much detail in . . . And yet he has not run out of what has endeared him to so many for so long: immense charm, an appetite to hurtle headlong at the biggest questions and the altogether unfashionable belief that sentimentality is not a crime against art

Mischievous . . . Challenging and absorbing . . . Juan Diego emerges as one of Irving’s most memorable and fascinating creations, which is saying something. He is a twenty-first century Garp.

Irving has embarked on his dark phase, as did Dickens. It will be interesting, if melancholy, to follow him down that gloomy avenue

A typically idiosyncratic Irving novel: at times exhausting, at other times rambling and self-indulgent, but always readable, impassioned and thought-provoking

Grabs you by the throat in a way few other authors’ work can

Irving’s powers of storytelling – when to give knowledge and when to withhold it, then smack you in the face with it – remain intact

Koomson brilliantly captures the fraught friendship between the two girls in this gripping tale.

Full of heart and sympathy.

An absolute page-turner of a novel…powerful and oh so compelling When I Was Invisible left me with a tear in my eye and touched my heart

A thought-provoking, emotional drama.

I’m a massive Dorothy Koomson fan, so I’ll be taking When I Was Invisible on holiday

Cancel the excursion to the ancient ruins and get poolside for this compelling story of love and forgiveness.

A hard-hitting tale

Great heart

Raw and emotional, this packs a punch

Koomson just gets better and better

Tense and emotional with truly empathetic characters

A powerful story about friendship and forgiveness, fans of Dorothy Koomson’s novels will enjoy the clever twists and unexpected turns, which keep the reader enthralled

A powerful book … it’s always good to be thinking of a book long after you put it down

A beautiful and clever novel

Thematically taut and compulsively paced.

A very good novel of anxiety, embarrassment and also, somehow, the depths of Englishness.

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

A novel offering more hope

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

Masterly