Caustic and entertaining

Sharply observed and always entertaining

This is an impressive debut: a good story, well told, great characters, with sardonic, knowing digs at the youthful pretention...clever, wry and often hilarious

Well-written, tremendously confident

Characters that leap out at you like figures in a pop-up book. Joseph O'Connor's first novel suggests he is bound for fame

A fast-moving novel about office affairs. The unusual feature of Kellaway's writing is the witty way in which she challenges established mores

Astute

Acutely observed

He has wit, style, and panache, in a world where those qualities are in permanently short supply

A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu ... Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's.

[A] comic masterpiece

Comic, satisfying, thought-provoking, addictive

It's his supreme skill in mastering a lengthily interwoven chronicle, the evolution of such a range and variety of pin-point characters, the wit and the cultural ambition that give the novel a unique place in English Literature.

It's full of insights and recognisable characters. Remarkable.

Wonderfully observed and true, funny, stylistically dazzling and soothing and long enough to take one through any lockdown.

A passionate, hilarious look at mid-twentieth-century Britain.

Something I know I love ... Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time, which I could read endlessly.

I’m bowled over, hooked and, hurrah, there are 11 more volumes to go as Jenkins grows up. Terrific.

A highly accomplished debut, this is a chilling portrait of racial tension, social immorality, betrayal and love, and also an atmospheric examination of the end of innocence.

The writing is strong and though the sections featuring Gay's earlier life lose momentum, the story picks up pace when the girls' paths become entwined and the conclusion is compelling and thrillingly macabre.

This fictional account of a true story gives a darkly shocking version of the events surrounding this tragic case.

Brilliantly melds a factual post-war murder into a dark fictional tale