This book is poetry as fierce fire. There is such intelligence and fervor in these poems about black men and their imperiled bodies, gay men and their impassioned bodies, what it means to be HIV positive, and so much more. Every poem impressed me, and the level of craft here is impeccable

Tremendously moving, an exalting and longed-for acknowledgement of historical pain ... Smith’s ability to look death squarely in the eye and seize from it language that is fertile with myth, beauty and intellect is astonishing

A powerful and moving read. Smith pays tribute to the young black men America has lost to police shootings, racism and injustice, and writes disarmingly about life and sex with HIV, all in a restless verse

Haunting … This material is necessarily bleak, but Smith’s mercurial invention means it’s never merely grim … The visionary 23-page opener, “summer, somewhere” […] is something truly remarkable; a song from a sunlit afterlife, an “unpopular heaven” for black boys killed young, all delivered in taut couplets …Memorable, moving and imbued with moral purpose. I read and re-read this collection (particularly its opening poem) over several weeks… “summer, somewhere” is, by any measure, a brilliant poem

[Danez Smith’s] poems are enriched to the point of volatility, but they pay out, often, in sudden joy… they also know the magic trick of making writing on the page operate like the most ecstatic speech. And they are, in their cadences and management of lines, deeply literary. I hear Gerard Manley Hopkins, the Jesuit priest who jury-rigged his verse to express personal turmoil, and Hart Crane, whose gentleness was expressed in an American idiom full of thunderclap, and Allen Ginsberg, who loved and learned from them both. The addition of Smith’s star turns a random cluster of points into a constellation, the way new work of this calibre always does… In this moving, unsettling work, the question is not simply one of craft. It’s about how the body and its authority can be manifested in writing, with only the spindly trace of letters to stand in for it

Danez Smith is angry, erotic, politicized, innovative, classical, a formalist, an activist, and blends all of this without seeming to strain... This will be one of the year's essential books

Danez Smith's is a voice we need now more than ever as living, feeling, complex, and conflicted beings. These poems of love extend beyond the erotic into the struggle for unity—not despite the realities of race but precisely because of what race has caused us to make of and do to one another. Don't Call Us Dead gives me a dose of hope at a time when such a thing feels hard to come by. This is a mighty work, and a tremendous offering

[An] achingly gorgeous poetry collection by the brilliant Danez Smith ... There is a hope here, pleas and prayers; these poems pierce and they burn, they work as incantations, they lift you up, but refuse to settle you back down. They are miraculous, sublime; if you do one thing for yourself this summer, let it be to read this book, and linger over each and every word

What is so extraordinary about this collection is its lyricism, its humanity, and its urgency. Don’t Call Us Dead is an historical commentary, a scientific document, a personal narrative, and a formal poetics. Smith uses every tool of craft at a poet’s disposal to deliver powerful, urgent, deliberate, crucial poems. Don’t miss this book

Elegy meets celebration of the black male body on every page . . . Smith can’t help but be breathtaking in style and substance

Where the stakes of living are high, Danez Smith puts their body right on the front line—‘i survived yesterday,’ they write, ‘spent it ducking bullets.’ In an America that conspires against black, brown, queer, and trans bodies, Danez writes poems of insistence and resistance; they anticipate a better world for all of us ‘where everything is sanctuary & nothing is a gun.’

Smith transcends elegy in this intimate, humorous, and biting collection in which he writes of desire, mortality, white supremacy, and more

Danez Smith is an original – that rare blend between raw blinding light, an instinct for the well aright line, the courage to walk into his own love and pain armed only with the fragile hope of words, and a fire so unique it’s all his own. In Don’t Call Us Dead he demands we stand only in the truth of our own fear and build a love that’s so redemptive and real. If you have ever lost faith, if you want to believe in life, then you must read this book – it will humble and uplift you, leave you understanding that in the face of it all, there is only awe

Part indelible elegy, part glorious love song to ‘those brown folks who make / up the nation of my heart,’ Smith’s powerhouse collection is lush with luminous imagery, slick rhythms, and shrewd nods to Lucille Clifton, Beyoncé, and Diana Ross. Incandescent, indispensable, and, yes, nothing short of a miracle

The content as well as the writing is transcendent

Luminous and piercing

These poems work to drive open a space of hope and resistance. Smith’s visions of the afterlife are visions of this world caught and held in a moment between hates… It should go without saying that these poems’ concerns speak as urgently to readers in the UK as the US

[Don’t Call Us Dead] might just be the year’s best poem [collection]

Cline's novel is a nerdcore odyssey; engaging and fun, this Gen-X popcult thrillride drew me in like a Galaxian machine set to free play.

Cline [crafts] a fresh and imaginative world from our old toy box ... Cline strikes the nerves of nerd culture as expertly as Andy played that skeleton organ in The Goonies

Totally awesome!

I would recommend this book in a heartbeat...young or old - it's just brilliant!

In the safe hands of none other than Mr. Steven Spielberg, this is your last chance to read the book before the movie hype drowns out the written word. A mixed up dystopian fantasy adventure novel with more nods to 80’s pop culture than even the biggest John Hughes fan will be able to handle, it’s just a whole lot of fun to read

This is one you need to read before EVERYONE knows about it!

Ultimately entertaining, enthusiastic and enjoyable. A real must-have for any collection…a beautifully constructed piece of escapism which will pull you in with such vigour that you miss your train stop.

Powerful and very timely message

A brilliant, rueful look at love.

Moving, funny, with ingenious emotional intelligence, it’s one to read and read again.

Barnes’s novel chronicles their romance with an austere tenderness

[Barnes’s] facility for writing artfully conceived and executed novels about unfulfilled, disappointed lives has risen to almost unassailable heights.

Julian Barnes writes shockingly well about emotion… The Only Story is devastating and wonderful.

A solemn-ish meditation on the fallibility of memory… A love story – bitter and sweet in parts – unfurls.

Exquisitely written, flawlessly imagined, The Mermaid & Mrs Hancock's siren song - of courtesans and merchants, shipwrecks and wonders, love and grief, ambition and passion - will echo like the ocean in a seashell long after the last page is turned.

[A] gripping debut… independence, love, class, death and gender stereotypes — are skilfully explored here through a late 18th-century lens

Beautifully written, sinuous, enchanting, brilliantly researched, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock goes deep into the eighteenth century - its grand front rooms, the secret places, the streets and the ocean that changed everything about Britain and it lays bare the hearts of a cast of unforgettable characters

This story really is spellbinding, an unforgettable jewel of a novel, filled to the brim with intelligence, heart and wit.

Beautifully written… By turns bawdy, witty and moving this is a glorious romp through Georgian London, in “the age of unlikely ascents”. With a truly gorgeous package á la The Essex Serpent, it deserves to be huge

Delightful… A gloriously immersive read, bringing Georgian London vividly to life… The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock impresses with Gowar’s attention to vivid and sensual detail

Its energy, characterisation and great sense of period completely seduced me.

An utterly absorbing read.

A gorgeously immersive novel.

Stunning.

In 2018 [mermaids] are back in vogue.

A terrific debut

The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock is the rare book that actually lives up to its hype and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t this year’s The Essex Serpent. Lush, vivid descriptions of 1780s Soho, proto-feminism, sparkly dialogue and a pleasingly irreverent style, it’s historical fiction even for people who don’t like historical fiction.

A tale of love, family and social status movingly told.

An absorbing tale of curiosity and obsession… Gowar’s prose is marvellous… There’s a beautiful balance of rhythm and intrigue, and an eye for what brings a book alive.

The most anticipated novel of the year.

An accomplished, captivating debut novel.

- The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a roistering, swaggering, bawdy novel… [a] confident and accomplished debut

Lush, vivid descriptions of 1780s Soho, proto-feminism, sparkly dialogue and a pleasingly irreverent style.

Prose that’s as effervescent as it is intelligent.

Gowar’s prose shimmers.

Rich and humorous, it’s a heady period whirl with a magic realist twist.

A highly impressing debut… An absorbing tale of sex, money, ambition and the lure of the new.

Gowar’s wonderful novel expertly captures that sense of a more fluid society… An engrossing and well-paced novel, shot through with melancholy, yet filled with wonder and desire. The sort of book you lose yourself in for days.

Imogen Hermes Gowar’s bawdy, picturesque romp through the heady miasma of Georgian London is easily one of the most wonderfully immersive, richly drawn books I’ve read in years… This piece of historical fiction is really something special… Some truly exquisite writing.

All-consuming and spellbinding.

Gowar's writing is energetic, and she has wonderful attention both to physical and emotional detail and to the circumstances that constrain lives

This glittering debut novel examines every rung of 18th-century London’s social ladder with keen wit and in delicious detail

A Dazzling account of dreams and desire in Georgian London