Writing that easily equals that of the Booker-winning Richard Flanagan...[and] as readable and gripping as any thriller. Only the thrills offered by this bright new star of literature are metaphysical and unexpected and will leave you thinking on a new level about the connections between men, women and places.

Beautifully written...this deserves to follow in the footsteps of 2014's big debut novels The Miniaturist and Elizabeth Is Missing.

Intriguing... a clear and beautifully unadorned prose style... Hooper has written an interesting, nuanced and genuinely moving book.

Hooper has more or less nailed the 'Amelie' charm with this sweet, disarming story of lasting love...Hooper shows great restraint in balancing the quirky with the universal, blurring the lines between them. This may be the best novel to meaningfully feature windblown dust. Hooper's steady hand creates the perfect setup for the unexpected. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens: A man and a woman are one. Two men, a woman and a coyote are one.

Luminous debut...there's a lovely musicality to her prose - care and attention have been spent on the rhythms and melody of her words...wonderfully tender.

Her debut novel is a magical, big-hearted book about one woman's walk to the sea. If Wes Anderson's stylised dream worlds make you happy, you need a copy of Etta and Otto and Russell and James.

A fan of Audrey Niffenegger and Alice Munro, Hooper's sense of playfulness comes across in the book's gentle magical realism'

charming, sweet...there is a singing simplicity that cuts through to the heart of things...fresh and touching

[A] delightful debut novel

Beautifully written...a powerfully moving account.

Picked as one of the hot authors to watch in 2015.

A sweet, redemptive message ...Etta's trek as she comes to the end of her life and reckons with the past, has a real and worthwhile dignity to it.

There's a huge buzz around this debut novel.

Canadian Emma Hooper is sure to be 2015's face of literary quirk.

The friends' life stories unfold in beautifully written, bite-sized chapters that ebb and flow between past and present like the sea Etta is seeking. Unusual, touching and utterly memorable.

An irresistibly enchanting debut novel

Hooper, with great insight, explores the interactions and connections between spouses and friends - the rivalries, the camaraderie, the joys and tragedies - and reveals the extraordinary lengths to which people will go in the name of love.

This is a quietly powerful story whose dreamlike quality lingers long after the last page is turned.

Magical... such wonderfully assured storytelling: it's been a very long time since a book has taken me by the hand - and the heart - as this one has.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper is incredibly moving, beautifully written and luminous with wisdom. It is a book that restores one's faith in life even as it deepens its mystery. Wonderful!

one of the best survival stories you’ll ever read (think Robinson Crusoe on Mars only more extreme).

Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.

Apollo 13-meets-Robinson-Crusoe-on-Mars, and I guess for those who enjoyed the films Gravity or Moon, this one will be a literary equivalent ... I was, in the end, totally won over by this book in its celebration of how humans can deal with anything the harshness of science and extreme environments can pose, and it kept me reading longer than I meant to

one of the most thrilling and absorbing novels I have ever read

Riveting...a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man's ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Weir combines the heart-stopping with the humorous in this brilliant debut novel... the perfect mix of action and space adventure.

An exciting, insightful science- based tale [that] kept me turning the pages to see what ingenious solution our hero would concoct to survive yet anotherimpossible dilemma

I loved that book.

[O]ne of my favourite reads of the year … Funny, irreverent, touching and well-written, this is definitely recommended.

Draws sibling love and rivalries with as much gentle satire as poignancy.

No one delineates familial bad behaviour the way [Hadley] does.

Tessa Hadley has the natural bent of a short-story writer, given to careful description and the kind of feinted closure that pushes uncomfortably past happily ever after.

Hadley is so insightful, such a lovely writer, that she pulls you right into the tangle of wires that connect and trip up the stressed siblings.

Her best so far

Hadley is expert at conveying emotion... The way she draws each character is so good the book feels like a huge achievement. Her best so far.

Hadley, who won the Hawthornden prize this month for The Past, is literary fiction’s best kept secret. Don’t let her fellow novelists keep her for themselves.

[The Past is] magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

There are hints of Larkin in her tender descriptions of landscape and imaginative responses to the ineffable… All her books are wonderful.

This is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.