The greatest of the English modernists after [DH] Lawrence and Virginia Woolf

Henry Green's novels are among the most dazzling, inventive and individual of the last century

The finest living English novelist

The most gifted prose writer of his generation

His novels made more of a stylistic impact on me than those of any writer, living or dead

These novels offer a glimpse of class in wartime and postwar Britain with wit and style thrown into the mix.

A night at an opera you'll wish never-ending

An astonishing universe into which its lucky readers can dissolve completely

Utterly engrossing. You won't want to miss this

A spellbinding story of intrigue and self-reinvention

Readers [will be] absorbed until the final aria, waiting to see whom fate will curse and whom it will avenge

Richly researched and ornately plotted

A wild opera of a novel and the perfect summer read: swift, smart, immersive and gorgeous

Her best book in years.

Uniquely moving love story.

Kennedy is never less than illuminating.

[Kennedy is] witty, sharp, almost too intelligent and a bit provocative.

An uplifting tale of the triumph of niceness over nastiness.

A writer of exquisite precision… A public novel, angrily political… Expressing her idea of a writer’s social responsibility so eloquently… Well-suited to Kennedy’s talent and her characteristically oblique and original way of seeing the world.

What sets this novel apart is Kennedy’s physical and emotional sensitivity to both solitude and tenderness.

Absorbing… Serious without being solemn, sweet without being sickly, it’s an elegant tale about the unexpected places where kindness and sympathy can flourish and deepen.

Kennedy’s comedy is ruthlessly observed – an anti-romance that warms into something moving and profound. It’s also a brilliant portrait of city living.

Two lonely people go about their day in London in this typically Kennedian and utterly wonderful novel… but they find their way towards each other in an agonising love story that’s all about morality and decency in a careless world… Kennedy is a stand-up comedian, and observational comedy runs through this novel in interior monologues that are heartbreakingly familiar and laugh-out-loud sad. Her sentences are some of the best in modern fiction (there’s a springer spaniel called Hector with “black, bewildered ears… [that] made him look as if he’d recently heard dreadful news and still hadn’t adjusted.”) and reading her prose is like eating those fizzy sweets that are both sweet and sour make you wince at the back of your mouth – then go back for more… It’s gorgeous.

Consistently raw and powerful… emotionally exhausting… But there’s a lot to be said for a novel which sets so much store by “affection and tenderness”, and in which the emotional peaks and the possibilities of redemption and renewal are marked by the simple holding of hands.

I love, love, love the Rushdie – I think it’s my favourite of his… The fantasy elements are just magical and, of course, it’s gorgeously written.

An apocalyptic battle between reason and unreason, good and evil, light and darkness, with all the bells and whistles of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Not only a beautifully written satire-as-fairytale but the subject matter is bang on trend… That Rushdie should still be writing so potently and still be continuing to push back the frontiers, when he could easily pull up a deck chair and languish on the frontiers he already owns is wonderful, inspirational and profoundly (but only in the best way) terrifying… 10/10, Master.

Ambitious, smart and dark fable that is full of rich and profound notions about human nature.

I like to think how many readers are going to admire the courage of this book, revel in its fierce colours, its boisterousness, humour and tremendous pizzazz, and take delight in its generosity of spirit.