Exhilarating in its nihilism, often very funny and always enjoyable… Serotonin burns with anger… [Michel Houellebecq is] the most interesting novelist of our times’

Houellebecq has once again managed to put his finger on modern French (and Western) society’s wounds, and it hurts

Any new book by Houellebecq is guaranteed to make waves, and Serotonin is no exception ... A bleak, uncompromising novel. But it also feels like an important one, asking some necessary questions in characteristically mordant fashion

A cautionary tale about dissipated manhood… Houellebecq may be, in certain respects, a man for our times

While Houellebecq is provocative and at times deliberately controversial, his success is not based solely on his ability to shock. He also has a beautiful fluid writing style…and an uncanny ability to evoke the spleen that for him is at the core of existence

The author’s prescience has certainly proved as eerie as his reported politics are contentious, yet Serotonin’s brilliance far exceeds its accuracy as a cultural barometer… Houellebecq is a disarmingly rich and nuanced writer; Serotonin is mordant, haunting but never (quite) embittered

Despite its provocations, this is a novel of romantic and sorrowful ideas: Houellebecq as troubadour, singing lost loves

Houellebecq has a sociological curiosity few other novelists possess... The agony and rage of the demoted, the discarded, the “deplorable” (a segment of them, if not the whole basket), laid bare. What other novelist would have the willingness to go there, let alone the wherewithal

To some, he is the only serious writer prepared to look at disagreeable aspects of the modern world – sex tourism, radical Islam, airports, free markets, pornography ... [Houellebecq’s] novels have a journalistic knack of chiming with events

Houellebecq’s disdain for the emptiness of modern western life often leaves him spookily ahead of the game ... The satirist carves up the branded ghastliness of restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and the like with a steady butcher’s hand

Houellebecq is a supreme chronicler of the psyche of modern European man

Houellebecq’s vision in his new novel, Serotonin, is blacker and sharper than ever…in Shaun Whiteside’s English translation, Houellebecq has never sounded more fluent

A Deadly Education is a book that lives up to its gob smacker of an opening sentence and follows right through to its shocker of an ending that promises more to come. Naomi Novik is relentlessly innovative and entertaining

Fresh, smart, and delightfully unique. It's Hogwarts with higher stakes and sharper claws, and I absolutely loved it.

The author's most entertaining novel to date

Fun and beautifully written

A story that never stops moving while always remaining focused on developing the characters of both the people and the school itself

A wonderful book ... done with a gorgeous twist of humour and great emotional insight ... One of my books of the year

Exquisite ... One of the funniest writers in Ireland

Immensely readable, warm, human and very, very funny

Pixies were loud-quiet-loud. Patrick Freyne is funny-sad-funny. I really loved his new book

Readers are sure to find themselves touched by Freyne's writing ... Delightful

Freyne's thoroughly entertaining debut is a flash of warmth and wit in the darkness

Genuinely moving ... [It] will evoke warmth in anyone who isn't totally sociopathic

A delightful insight into the mind of the hilarious Patrick Freyne

So honest, so funny, and most importantly, 11/10 for self-deprecation

Brilliant ... An absolute mind hug

Freyne's radar is precision-honed to find the madness within the mundane

More moving that I ever expected and somehow funnier than I assumed

Captivating and moving.

Moving... Beneath the attention-seeking is a well-loved author who has gone through his cupboards, giving us all that he has.

A defiant and witty testimony to mortality and a tender remembrance of his friends and literary heroes… I’ve been reading and re-reading it this year

Continues in the same superior vein as Restoration… The fusion of such an engrossing character, and the minutiae of another time, remains a marvel

In this evocative and beautifully drawn novel of family and loyalty in the face of an uncertain future Tremain continues the story of a wonderfully unique character

Hugely enjoyable

Merivel’s hapless charm remains intact in this tour de force of literary technique

A sequel that looks back to the earlier novel without ever quite recapturing its spirit is the perfect form in which to evoke that feeling of having to carry on, and of trying to make yourself have fun even with it eventually begins to hurt

A marvelllously rollicking good read, and it is such a pleasure to meet Robert Merivel again. Rose Tremain brings the character to life in a way that makes you want to find out even more about the period. Enormously skilled and deft