Daisy Johnson is a new goddamn swaggering monster of fiction

Saturated in mythology and fairy tales, Everything Under is weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling. Daisy Johnson writes in a torrent of language as unrelenting and turbulent and dark as the river at the book’s heart; dive in for just a moment and you’ll emerge gasping and haunted

The kind of book that worms its way into your brain, leaving echoes of its story and world long after it is back on the shelf… beautifully creepy and affecting

A stunning debut novel. Blending a deep understanding of character and storytelling examination… the result reminds me of Iris Murdoch… Johnson’s affinity for the natural world is extraordinary

Everything Under grabbed me from the first page and wouldn’t let me go. To read Daisy Johnson is to have that rare feeling of meeting an author you’ll read for the rest of your life.

Everything Under is a force of nature ... Like Iris Murdoch's 1954 novel Under the Net, Johnson's Man Booker Prize finalist is concerned with language, secrets and the damage wrought by what's left unsaid.

Imaginative and innovative... there is a spellbinding tension. As the threads move towards a common end, you’re a child who wants to know the magic.

A formally ambitious novel with a thriller’s heart and intimate attention to the power of language.

I’m under the spell of an extraordinary book… Everything Under [is] a gift from a wise and empathetic friend who understands the gypsy gift of storytelling – to transcend and enthral.

A triumph: a novel that feels inexorable, messy and profound all at once.

[Daisy Johnson’s] first novel confirms not only her talent, but her ambition… Johnson’s dense, begrimed retelling [of the Oedipus myth] hums with an electricity pylon-charge of danger, and her sentences repeatedly flare with startling, visceral coinages.

Infused with dark fairy tale, Oedipal tragedy and Freudian desire, this is a brambly, atmospheric and immersive tale… Johnson’s [Everything Under] shines in its use of language.

A weird and wonderful revisioning of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex… Johnson writes with a mesmerising blend of the naturalistic and the surreal, spinning physical descriptions of muscular beauty… This is a novel that drives to its tragic outcome with the twisting but unstoppable logic of a river to the sea.

A hybrid of Alexander Trocchi’s 1954 murder-on-a-canal novel Young Adam and Angela Carter at her most witchy and far-out, Everything Under is creative writing of distinction.

A deeply involving, unsettling novel that pulls the reader into a uniquely eerie yet recognisable world.

Johnson excels at making psychic phenomena feel visceral.

As readable as it is dazzling, full of unsettling twists and dark revelations

Surprising, gorgeously written, and profoundly unsettling, this genderfluid retelling of Oedipus Rex will sink into your bones and stay there.

Hypnotic, disquieting and thrilling. A concoction of folklore, identity and belonging which sinks its fangs into the heart of you.

Everything Under seeped through to my bones. Reaching new depths hinted at in Fen, language and landscape turn strange, full of creeping horror and beauty. It is precise in its terror, and its tenderness. An ancient myth masterfully remade for our uncertain times.

A fantastically dark reinvention of the myth of Oedipus… a complicated but deeply satisfying novel.

This is a thrilling novel… Like Daisy Johnson’s startling debut, the short-story collection Fen, this lyrical, multi-layered novel explores her deep love and understanding of the natural world and shadowy people eking out a living close to it. She writes beautifully and vividly… with a brooding atmosphere that draws the reader into an uncanny and menacing watery world. It is exquisitely written, but very affecting.

Explores femininity, family and identity with a timeline and narrators that eddy and clash like sticks thrown into a river... like a current, it soon carries you away.

[Daisy Johnson's] first collection Fen drew comparisons to Angela Carter and Graham Swift and there is an otherworldly, folkloric tinge to her inventive first novel although it is set in modern-day, rural England... Beautiful.

Everything Under is an unusual and eerily atmospheric read from new talent Daisy Johnson.

Encompassing myth, fairy tale and haunting language, Johnson's earthy and timeless depictions of gender and sexuality turn an old tale into something entirely current.

Impressive.

Everything Under is otherworldly and captivating… a book that is as beautifully human as it is delightfully strange.

Barbed, gripping and marvellously written.

Tessa Hadley is easily one of my favourite authors writing today, and her new novel – Late in the Day... has been highly praised by everyone I know (and, crucially, trust) who's already got their hands on it.

Tessa Hadley is well-known for her inimitable portrayal of character and her latest effort, Late in the Day, is no disappointment... A smart exploration of human nature, desire, and friendship.

A penetrating observer of human behavior, [Hadley] has a gift for dialogue that bristles with what remains unsaid… vividly imagined… Hadley presents a masterly portrait.

Strange, unsettling — eerily beautiful, discomfiting, stay-up-late-addictive, sometimes hair-raising... Always, it’s Hadley’s high-res magnification on the interplay of marital (and friendship, and parental) dynamics that supplies her work’s steady gold.

[Hadley’s] prose is a form of civilised conversation... Late in the Day is a very good novel indeed… [Hadley] knows when to let silence speak, and she has the rare gift of writing dialogue which both rings true and hints at what had been left unsaid but is keenly and sometimes painfully felt.

A clever, compassionate novel that sings to the possibility of renewal in late middle-age.

[A] splendid, perceptive book… Hadley has expertly examined the complications and intimacies of marriage and family in such novels as The Past, The Master Bedroom and Clever Girl. In Late in the Day she continues her persistent exploration of human frailty and resilience, moving easily between the present and the past to reveal the hard edges and silent compromises that shape all relationships.

Her prose has the penetrating quality of Henry James at his most accessible… and is alert, as Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen were, to how time sculpts, warps or casually destroys us... A quiet triumph.

Late in the Day is confident, brilliant, dark and interesting.

Tessa Hadley’s brilliant new novel – an event that always sparks joy… [– is an] elegantly written, ironically witty book… [Hadley] is constantly being favourably compared to Virginia Woolf – as well as Jane Austen and Henry James.

This is not a novel filled with incident, its pleasures are perception, insight and the intense examination of emotions… A very grown-up read.

Tessa Hadley’s compelling new novel, Late in the Day, is a subtle, delicate evocation of modern life… Hadley’s observation is pin-sharp: whether describing a contemporary student’s house, a late-night drive, or simply a quiet room with only the reading light turned on, there is a shapely intelligence at work… There is something of Iris Murdoch’s fierce attention to the physical here.

Tessa Hadley has become literary fiction’s chronicler-in-chief of the lives and loves of the English middle classes… Conveying their lifestyle with shrewd economy… Hadley relies on patient, persuasive observation to draw us into a satisfying family drama of hopes and regrets as viewed from the fag end of middle age.

Tessa Hadley’s great success as a novelist lies in… examining her characters with an unusual degree of psychological subtlety. Her particular strength is to combine a deep excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects.

Clever and thoughtful… [Late in the Day] is wholly impressive.

Hadley… [is] authoritative and powerful… a complex story structure juxtaposing present and past and featuring carefully timed revelations.

This is the perfect example of domestic fiction done well… Hadley's prose is measured, spare and utterly perceptive of the human condition.

Extraordinarily skilled and penetrating.

The language is poetic and beautifully crafted… [and it] is the measured intimacy of Hadley's language that allows her to capture in so few words, the whirring emotions that stir beyond the surface.

Crisp, considered prose.

Exquisitely written… A slow burn that’s as elegant as it is crushingly emotional.

Late in the Day… [is] beautifully written with moments of real tenderness — I found it immensely enjoyable and thought-provoking.

A wonderfully involving, intelligent and subtle.

One of the best literary offerings so far this year.

A prime study of the modern condition.

Tessa Hadley is one of those rare authors who keep getting better and better… the writing is joyous, and the conclusion will set your heart singing.

Hadley’s prose is so elegant, her quiet observations on ageing, adultery, motherhood and art so penetrating, it is pure reading pleasure.

Unflinching, intelligent and fascinating

Hadley’s elegant sentence-making is pure joy, combining scathing observation with careful compassion in a novel.

A stunning read by a masterly writer.

Late in the Day will delight fans of Tessa’s work and is an excellent introduction to her style for those unfamiliar with her novels. It’s a gentle yet impactful and deeply thought-provoking book that will leave you reflecting on your own choices and relationships – and makes a perfect beginning to a new year of reading.

A brilliant, beautiful novel populated by multifaceted characters and lit by Hadley's insight and skill.

Reflective, poignant and beautifully written, it reminds us that the constant in life is change.

Compelling.

[A] compelling novel… Hadley captures the way old feelings, longings and hidden secrets unravel tight-knit relationships.