A Bee Journal is like no other, for the bees are real, and the book is an accurate study of an apiarist’s year, each poem a perfect study, a perfect poem.

nature poetry at its best

Sean Borodale is without doubt the most exciting new poet I have read since Alice Oswald. His Bee Journal raises the bar for us all and announces a thrilling new voice in British poetry

Truly heady and intense poems, honey itself in poetic form, a sustained tour de force of language and thought

This book is a kind of uncut home-movie of bees. I like its oddness and hurriedness, its way of catching the world exactly as it happens in the split-second before it sets into poetry. These are pre-poems, note-poems dictated by phenomena. Their context is bees, but their subject (intriguingly) is Time...

Harbours great energy and abundant imagination...a strikingly original voice

Borodale is an extremely accomplished poet…the most beautiful expression of what it is like to live with bees that you could hope to find…they show a wonderful clarity of thought and expression and a great talent for capturing an impression. The recent rising popularity of beekeeping has spawned a number of popular books on the subject but this towers above them all in ambition and emotional effect. It is an exquisite window into bees and beekeeping

Sean Borodale’s Bee Journal lifts the veil on the apiarists life and goes to the heart of the hive… The dense and intense language is the verbal equivalent of the honey that delights the tongue

Book to savour and reserve for treat reading, a bit like the best honey…a word-filled jar of golden treasure

Ian is a little star. His many sayings and observations that he'll burst out with are endearing - and often funny. It's clear that Lucy is smitten by her favourite 'borrower.'

This story - often fun, sometimes sad, always bookish - deals with big issues...Rebecca Makkai's literary debut will appeal to young adults and readers of adult literary fiction

In Makkai's picaresque first novel, Lucy, a 26-year-old children's librarian, "borrows" her favorite patron, bright, book-loving 10-year-old Ian, after his fundamentalist parents enroll him in a program meant to "cure" his nascent homosexuality.

His biggest, most ambitious and most engaging novel to date

Psychological acuity, a wonderful linguistic precision and the ability to make beautiful accordance between form and content via thoughtful narrative experiment. Gods without Men is a step further along the road towards the full realisation of Kunzru's early promise. It makes undeniable the claim that he is one of our most important novelists . . . As large and cruel and real as life

Ambitiously eclectic . . . smartly sharp social detail, high-fidelity dialogue, vivid evocation of place . . . ironic wit and exuberant guyings of paranormal gobbledegook

Fuelled by an energetic intelligence. Along with a love of big ideas came narrative zest, verbal and comic flair, and an acute eye for contemporary mores both East and West . . . Gods with Men marks another new and bold departure . . . This really is Kunru's great American novel . . . Compulsively readable, skilfully orchestrated, Kunzru's American odyssey brings a new note into his underlying preoccupation with human identity'

Being able to create a vivid sense of place is one of the hallmarks of a quality literary writer, but few could have done so as brilliantly as Hari Kunzru in his latest novel Gods without Men

Intensely involving . . . Gods Without Men is one of the best novels of the year