An extraordinary piece of work...it has a freshness, a freakish charm, an irrepressible energy

A gem of a book: rare, simple, innocent and charming

Unusual in the way that the sympathetic female narrator either cheerfully disregarded or, more often than not, gently mocked her husband and family. The book was a wild success and by 1899 it had run through 21 editions.

A witty tale about marrying a richer, older man and finding liberation from a stifling world of elitism through gardening. It was a risky tale for its time, and still feels modern on both love and the garden.

Delightful

The psychology is shrewd and adroit and the dialogue is witty

Elizabeth von Arnim had a neat wit, a wild sense of comedy, and a vision - continually thwarted though it was - of potential happiness.

Emotional depth and dramatic maturity... Unarguably Foer's most substantial and impressive work yet

Lays bare the interior of a marriage with such intelligence and deep feeling and pitiless clarity, it's impossible to read it and not re-examine your own family.

A brilliantly acrobatic imagination

Provocative . . . very, very funny. Dialogue pings, as animated and inventive as an Aaron Sorkin script.

Terrific, truthful, extremely funny and heartbreaking.

A rich, beautifully written, ambitious and grandly moving novel, which looks both at the world at large and at the deepest concerns of individual lives.

Astonishing. So sad and so funny and so wry. The book that The Corrections ought to have been

Brilliant, masterly, always original

A delightful fish-out-of-water account stitched together with gentle yet wondrous prose

McCloskey is a keen, sympathetic observer; her tight, controlled prose meticulously details Alice's honest consideration of her flaws and desires. The melancholic complexity of Alice's very human struggle carries this elegant novel with no easy answers.

p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Calibri; -webkit-text-stroke: #000000} span.s1 {font-kerning: none} Humane and lucid ... The real heartbreak in this wise, discomfiting novel turns out to be the love between mother and daughter

McCloskey interrogates the universal need of finding our place in the world in this luminous novel about longing and belonging. ... McCloskey's slim novel has an emotional heft and power that stirs you long after you've closed its pages.

Masterly

McCloskey's prose is lovely and light-filled

Terrific, sharply observed… Segal gets the precarious mother-teenage daughter relationship spot on

Segal’s is a clever, cruel, redemptive, psychologically acute novel that made this reader glad to have been at school just too early for Facebook, selfies and an “online community” baying for news of your latest boyfriend

Thoughtful and beautifully observed

A gripping foray into second families

Thanks to its occasional moments of emotional veracity, The Awkward Age will be praised as a worthy successor to Segal’s debut

Francesca Segal is an accomplished writer. She neatly describes the clash of cultures between the academically rigorous education enjoyed by Nathan and Gwen’s freer, no-holds-barred comprehensive school. There is an engaging and colourful cast of characters… Segal vividly conveys the difficulties faced by imperfectly blended families

This is a warm, funny book dealing with a most modern matter

A brilliant, thoroughly modern family drama from the author of The Innocents

Punchy… Segal tackles her subject with humour and intelligence and a wealth of memorable characters

Exuberant and entertaining… The rest of the narrative then considers how the competing needs and duties of its four main characters can be met, handled and resolved. It does so with brio, insight and empathy, and with carefully modulated comic energy

A compelling story on the complexities that come with a very modern family that we just couldn’t put down

Love, loss, new beginnings and saying goodbye, it's all in here. A moving read

A terrific novel.

[Segal's] descriptions are spare and unerring; everyday family interactions are observed warmly and yet with precision