A startling novel. I have rarely read a piece of writing so poetic

He is an important storyteller because he is sensitive and he has an incredible ear, which, in his fiction, is allied to great ingenuity

I learnt more about the Spanish Civil War from The Carpenter's Pencil...than from any history book I've read

Vann evokes the scrub, ridges and conifers of northern California with the meticulous eye of a great landscape artist...This story has genuine potency.

This is Vann’s fourth novel, and in that short time he’s mapped out a unique fictional territory, a rugged, literary landscape with debts to Cormac McCarthy and Ernest Hemingway but with an acuteness of eye that’s all the author’s own...Vann’s description of place and action is unsurpassed, a wonderful clarity to his prose, and the voice of his narrator is truly frightening as he tries to come to terms with what’s happened. The tension builds to an extraordinary and explosive climax among the heavily forested mountains, where everything that makes us who we are is called into question. Powerful and deep stuff.

The book has the quality of a ballad or a folk tale…Mr Vann’s work is death-haunted…[He] is so adept, in Goat Mountain, at conjuring a world where rationality has no place…This story has the power of a bullet fired from a gun.

[A] powerful tale of the complicated fragility of family ties…Internationally acclaimed and bestselling author David Vann convincingly conjures up the primeval atmosphere of the wilderness and the depth of the hunting instinct. The spirit of the Old Testament is never very far from his prose, and the story of Cain and Abel hovers over the boy’s sense of right and wrong. Tense and unsettling stuff, difficult to put down and disturbingly memorable.

This is a coming of age story as old as Goat Mountain itself and Vann’s descriptions of the Northern Californian landscape are beautiful and meticulously drawn... Vann’s prose has real pace and momentum and drama so intense that this reader often gasped out loud at the horror presented... This is a triumph of a novel. Please read it.

Vann’s writing is highly descriptive…a gripping read

The author has constructed a wide beautiful splendid vista tainted by a stream of flowing hot red blood with great sentences with a visceral and fluid prose ... David Vann has a prose and voice that the reader may know of, this novel comes to finalise in his dealings with death, loss, and sacrifice, this story marks a great point in his writing’s timeline. One cannot help but feel excited and expectantly wait upon his next novel, on what road he shall traverse and what characters he shall craft with great skill.

Vann’s writing is thoughtful and profound.

There's no doubt that this is a deeply disturbing and violent book — there's one particular scene involving a wounded buck that is stomach-churning — but this is a powerful read that deals with important subjects, not least at what point should a child take responsibility for his actions. It ruminates on the sanctity of life, the sins of the father, the rules (or ethics) of hunting, human guilt and remorse, crime and punishment….[It will] appeal to those who like dark suspenseful tales about moral culpability.

It’s an extraordinary achievement and a riveting work of prose

A classic Ackroyd tale that will not fail to please

With its distinctive language, structure and narrative approach, Lenin's Kisses presents a distictive version of 'rural china' and 'revolutionary China', even while establishing a new literary 'native China'

Yan Lianke sees and describes his characters with great tenderness . . . this talented and sensitive writer exposes the absurdity of our time

Sophie Hannah is a real star.

Sophie Hannah has quickly established herself as a doyenne of the 'home horror' school of psychological tension, taking domestic situations and wringing from them dark, gothic thrills.

Hannah is a master of intense psychological thrillers . . . Full of twists and turns, and terrifying, too.

She grips from start to finish - a grip which held me against my will because the sustained atmosphere of mild hysteria is hard to take . . . I couldn't put it down.

Pynchon’s latest novel is a historical romance set in during the internet’s infancy in the spring of 2001.

Bleeding Edge is a romp. On full display are Pynchon’s trademark linguistic and imaginative acrobatics… It may sound frivolous but an emotional maturity counterpoints the silly songs, deliberately bad puns, and pop-cultural references

When he’s in his hardboiled vein, [Pynchon] writes the most entertaining dialogue in any year.

Pynchon's best novel since Mason & Dixon, an exhilarating shaggy-dog private-detective story that punctured its own garrulous charm with sharp stabs of betrayal and threat. Astonishing, too, that that a 76-year-old should produce a novel with such wild and slangy bounce.

Pynchon at his most hilarious, it gave way to more sombre realities involving a suspicious Silicon Alley tech company and its possible links to international terrorism and who knows what else.

Suspenseful and darkly humorous.

Intriguing, and probably the most straightforwardly readable of his books.

A thrilling ride through the first tech bubble, filled with "bleeding edge" technology... Accomplished, funny and digressive.

Pynchon's take on the attack on the Twin Towers. Will he reject the conspiracy theories of the "truthers" or spin some new conspiracies of his own? I think the answer is both. But I wouldn't swear to it.

· Pynchon delivered a piece of typically raggedy brilliance with Bleeding Edge.

Engrossing, hilarious and shocking.

Pynchon’s high-energy writing crackles with dark wit and foreboding

Playful and paranoid New York noir

Readers will have to decide for themselves how they feel about an open-ended mystery, but for those who don’t care so much about the destination, the journey is more than worth it