If, as Henry James said, the first duty of the novelist is to be interesting, he would be happy in St Aubyn's company. Double Blind is emotionally cogent and intellectually fascinating. There are reflections and conversations here which adroitly evoke those important intersections where science and our urgent contemporary concerns meet. I was gripped by it.

Double Blind is a book of big ideas, in which the characters experiment with medicine, psychology, narcotics, religion and meditation to understand themselves and find peace. But as cerebral as the book is, it is also deeply felt, because St Aubyn has been thinking about these issues for decades

This is a novel with heart... Double Blind is both clever and compassionate, confirming St Aubyn as among the brightest lights of contemporary British literature

Shakespearean in scope and tone, moving from the intimate to the universal within paragraphs and providing tragedy, comedy and human frailty... A less practised author would run the risk of over-saturating all the disparate strands, but St Aubyn offers comment on the natural world, genetics, family dynamics, philosophy, psychiatry and ecology without forgetting the tapestry-like threads of the story itself-and provides a satisfying resolution to boot... Brimful of energy, this novel asks big questions-"How could one ever truly enter into another subjectivity?"-without giving us all the answers... Pacey, caustic and self-aware, it is this neatly choreographed dance of themes and ideas that makes for such absorbing and immediate reading.

Likeable and rounded characters and a celebration of the best things in life: the wilderness of Knepp and a touching but complex love story... St Aubyn's reinvention as a writer is heroic and astonishing. He has emerged from the "very difficult truth" of this childhood to write brilliantly about that and, now, about a lot more.

There is in Double Blind a compassion that St Aubyn has elsewhere tended to either eschew or keep implicit. Despite the novel's acerbic edge, St Aubyn is attentive to his characters' suffering and vulnerability whatever their privileges . . . St Aubyn's prose is as elegant as anybody familiar with his previous work might expect. Indeed, so consistent is the writing's quality the reader is apt to miss its many charms, acclimated as they are to it . . . Double Blind is yet another ambitious work by one of today's finest literary stylists

This is the best kind of novel of ideas, as entertaining as it is chewy, not to mention immensely pleasurable on the sentence level

St Aubyn has lost none of his ability to create rounded characters...and the witty dialogue is well up to the standard of the Melrose books

Where Patrick Melrose's trauma was childhood abuse and neglect, for Francis it's abuse and neglect of the planet, for which a new interconnectedness with nature is the only cure... It's bold of St Aubyn to write a novel that's so much about science and about so much science... ideas matter and so does the novel of ideas.

Both moving and so funny I had to stop every few pages to wipe tears from my eyes

As an addict of Edward St Aubyn's crystalline prose, I devoured Double Blind, a typically audacious blend of big themes

Gripping... With grace and a dose of forgiveness, Goldsworthy performs a heartbreaking but exhilarating evisceration of the myths by which we live now

Goldsworthy's crisply observed and entertaining novel has serious overtones and poses uncomfortable questions, not least about the supposed superiority of the West

A love story that begins in the East and moves to the West. It serves as a timely reminder that the European states once dominated by Soviet ideology were a patchwork of cultures with their own individual histories

[A] well-observed, witty novel

It would be possible to read library stacks' worth of books about what life on the eastern side of the curtain was like, trying to understand the feeling of the late Soviet Union... Or you could read this book

Beautifully crafted... Goldsworthy's evocative descriptions of both worlds - the rigid ice of the east and the damp monotony of the west - lend a filmic quality to this layered novel

Goldsworthy's perceptive and well-crafted story plays like The Americans as revised by Sally Rooney, with acidic observations worthy of the late Kingsley Amis. By flipping the Cold War script, Goldsworthy comes up with a winner.

Witty, poignant and full of surprises - every detail of this cross-cultural story of love and disillusionment rings true.

An unflinching brilliant novel about the mental divide between East and West in Europe in the Cold War era.

Picks up the mantel of writers like Margaret Atwood and Kazuo Ishiguro . . . but it also stands on its own as a remarkable, propulsive novel. At a moment when state control over women's bodies (and autonomy) seems ever more chilling, the book feels horrifyingly unbelievable and eerily prescient all at once

[An] enthralling speculative debut . . . A powerful story, made more so by its empathetic and complicated heroine

Enthralling....a powerful story, made more so by its empathetic and complicated heroine

A gripping, witty and ultimately redemptive vision of dystopian motherhood

This scarily prescient novel that's reminiscent of Orwell and Vonnegut explores the depths of parents' love, how strictly we judge mothers and each other and the terrifying potential of government overreach

(An) infuriatingly timely debut novel... that may read more like a preview than a dystopia, depending on your faith in the future of Roe v. Wade

No book has ever made me cry this much. The School for Good Mothers is an absolute masterpiece

A powerful story

Chan's high-concept novel may toy with dystopia but it remains chillingly plausible, a portrait of our fanatical culture of judgement against women, and mothers in particular, taken to a grotesquely logical extreme

A nail-biting explosive story exploring the pressures of 'perfect' parenting

The writing is at times hilarious and scalpel sharp

Part science fiction, part incarceration narrative and part Cultural Revolution memoir, it is as gripping as it is terrifying - and for mothers struggling to 'do the right thing', all too believable

Propulsive and provocative

The School For Good Mothers is a perceptive, prescient and daring debut that presents a dystopia that doesn't feel as far away as we'd like it to

An unforgettable an haunting story about the thoughts, opinions and choices you make

Reminiscent of The Handmaid's Tale, this eerie page-turner is a captivating depiction of a dystopian world that feels entirely possible. It's not only the gripping story of Frida's personal struggle, but also a thought-provoking work of commentary on American motherhood

I was fascinated and intrigued by this feminist dystopian novel

So brilliant and haunting and ahead of its time... the only book that has ever stopped me from sleeping

An absolutely gripping debut.

Switch the phone to silent, banish all distractions: it's time for a book binge

Fabulous. I loved becoming reacquainted with the Walsh family

A masterclass in creating the perfect follow-up story . . . This sequel shone

Included in 'Best Paperbacks of April 2023'

There aren't many books that come along . . . where on one page you can be laughing hysterically, and then you turn the page and you're nearly in tears for the opposite reason. This is that book. Beautifully told. Loads of warmth, loads of humour.

She is a genius stylist. Her characters are so vivid, her situations feel so real and authentic. This is my favourite book of hers.

Amazing

Enticing

There's light and dark in all Keyes' novels, equal measures of hilarity and heartbreak

Hard to put down

Lovable, funny. Doesn't disappoint

Keyes at the peak of her powers

Praise for Marian Keyes

Messy, tangled complex humans who reminded me that few of us ever really sort out our lives at all

A novel that is warm and witty but never afraid to tackle the big stuff

Magnificently messy lives, brilliantly untangled. Funny, tender and completely absorbing!

Keyes knows how to make serious issues relatable - and get a few grownup laughs, too

There should be a word to describe the sadness and satisfaction you feel when you read the last page of a Marian Keyes novel: the ending is perfect but you still want more, more, more

Charming, funny and poignant. But also profound, heartbreaking

Keyes at her best: capturing everyday voices with humour and empathy with writing that you'll devour in a weekend. Just pure and simple joy

Funny, thought-provoking and will get you right in the feels

Sensitive, funny, wonderful, immensely touching

Marian Keyes's gift for storytelling is utterly magnificent

Rachel Walsh is back with a bang. Wickedly shrewd and fun