This exceptional debut novel is a warm, often funny dramatisation of the balance between anxious love and worthwhile risk

A master of his environment, Christie is also deft at inhabiting the mind of a child in his writing … powerful and page-turning … A first novel that is complex, symbolic and a little bit wondrous.

A captivating debut novel

An astonishing piece of work. Christie combines lyrical prose and true-to-life characters—and skateboarding—to craft a remarkable tale of mothers and sons, and what it means to grow up.

There are moments of real tenderness, and real strangeness too, as Will gradually embraces risk and seeks friendship. It feels less part of some sub-genre cooked up by the marketing department than a contribution to a real, archetypal literary tradition, that of the coming-of-age story.

If I Fall, If I Die is an expertly crafted work of great heart and sensitivity. I can’t recall a truer or more beautiful debut.

A bruiser of a tale, one you will feel in your shins and your solar plexus. Michael Christie is a virtuosic prose stylist and boy is he so very wise and so funny on families and friendships, fear and joy, and the physics of sky and pavement. If I Fall, If I Die is a death-defying coming of age story; it’s also as weird and as convincing a love story as I have ever read. And so beautifully told that you’ll want to pass it on immediately.

A lyrically descriptive tale with an endearing young protagonist

Beautiful … [a] wonderful, quirky, eccentric book full of wit and spectacular prose. If you are looking for a unique read which you can immerse yourself in, with stimulating language and characters to latch on to and love, then If I Fall, If I Die needs to be your next book purchase. A book that I will go back to and read again and a stunning first novel from Michael Christie. A wonderful treasure of a book.

The reader alternates between knowing more than the characters and searching to unravel the mystery, with creative prose and incremental pay-offs, the 300 pages of Christie’s captivating debut novel fly by

This is a harrowing, but gripping love story

Wonderfully enticing.

Individual scenes are often gripping, shocking or moving.

The bloody horrors of conflict are captured with visceral aplomb in this fine, minimalist novel.

Some of the most vividly evoked battle scenes I've read – he doesn't shy away from taking risks … chilling and touching all at the same time.

Foulds has the literary intelligence to turn the commonplace on its head.

A high-class thriller … Foulds has a literary novelist's feel for [Sicily's] harsh beauty.

Foulds’ prose is superb… It reads like Catch-22 written by Evelyn Waugh.

It’s an ambitious book and the writer relates his story with poetic precision

Told in a language that is both lyrical and stark The Tusk that Did the Damage should win Tania James praise and laurels from those readers who long for a more penetrating look at environmental issues and the moral questions which accompany them’.