He writes with impressive directness and simplicity at moments of passion-One is aware of the compassionate intelligence that is discreetly but continuously at work in this book

'Colin Thubron's voice is unique'

Impeccably crafted and beautifully written-many books which are highly enjoyable in the reading leave no imprint on the imagination. This one does

Mark Swabey, a provincial journalist, is serving a prison sentence in connection with the death of Clara the Swallow, a circus acrobat with whom he fell in love. And the grief-stricken Swabey looks back on their brief affair, the exact nature of his responsibility for Clara's death is movingly revealed-every sentence is informed by the most intense anguish'

Thubron weaves a skilful, poignant story of love and loss, and also reinvents the myth of the Fall-This novel is above all celebratory. It trumpets the right to walk out on the high wire, to love dangerously and hopelessly - even if death (real or metaphorical) is the price

Freudenberger, a deliciously precise and perceptive writer, loosely based Amina on a woman she met on an airplane, and when she describes Amina's recognition 'that the permanent part of your own experience' is largely an illusion, we can only be glad they struck up what must have been a helluva conversation

Dazzling

A delight, one of the easiest book recommendations of the year . . . Freudenberger knows Amina as well as Jane Austen knows Emma, and despite its globe-spanning set changes, The Newlyweds offers a reading experience redolent of Janeite charms: gentle touches of social satire, subtly drawn characters and dialogue that expresses far more than its polite surface

With her penetrating understanding of and respect for her subjects, both foreign and domestic, [Freudenberger is] an international writer of stature for the twenty-first century

Exceptional...here is an honest depiction of life as most people actually live it: Americans and Asians, Christians and Muslims, liberals and conservatives. Freudenberger writes with a cultural fluency that is remarkable and a prose that is clean, intelligent, and very witty

There is an incandescent talent at work here

Remarkable...a truly prodigious talent

Prose as warm and refreshing as a Californian morning

Genuinely moving . . . Freudenberger demonstrates her assurance as a novelist and her knowledge of the complicated arithmetic of familial love, and the mathematics of romantic passion

Like Lahiri, Franzen and Eugenides, Freudenberger excels at chronicling her characters' emotional lives and world views

It's really, really good . . . A luscious and intelligent novel that will stick with you

Captivating