A moving and haunting book

It is the cleverest of books. I especially love the dialogue - every speech reveals the characters' obsessions and preoccupations, yet it remains perfectly natural...absolutely gripping

Jane Austen is my favourite author! Shut up in measureless content, I greet her by the name of most kind hostess, while criticism slumbers

The wit of Jane Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste

Like Irvine Welsh, I am a great admirer of Jane Austen

For those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta Stone of literature

How could these novels ever seem remote...the gaiety is unextinguished today, the irony has kept its bite, the reasoning is still sweet, the sparkle undiminished, as comedies they are irresistibly and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be

That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with

I'd like to write a play as perfect as Emma

A literary phenomenon on the grandest scale – a work of genius

Sublime and sweet melancholy suffuses the story. Beautiful

A delicate meditation on mortality, decay and the fading of beauty

Historical fiction at its best

No novel is perfect, but this small, wonderfully atmospheric and immensely poignant story...comes very close