Desai has a wicked, subtle humour...and her characters are beautifully described... Her writing is polished and mature, with a wit she cleverly underplays

Anita Desai is one of Tolstoy's inheritors. Like his, her writing is sensuous, radical and uncannily perceptive... Fasting, Feasting is a hypnotically readable story, in language which has the precision of poetry...an ambitious, successful and disturbing novel

A compelling, mature work by India's finest writer in English

A quiet, low-key novel, notable for its vignettes...[which] are so sharp, so rich in detail, that the book packs a real polemic punch...Fasting Feasting is a fine showcase for the delicate, distinctive skills of Anita Desai

Brooklyn moved me more than any other book this year

A beautifully crafted work that transformed ordinary lives into something extraordinary

No book this year gave me greater pleasure

Not a sentence or a thought out of place. It takes over as his finest ficiton to date

Remarkable freshness and immediacy ... with a lovely comedic lightness

A lovely, thoughtful book ... alive with authentic detail, moved along by the ripples of affection and doubt that shape any life: a novel that offers the reader serious pleasure

Tremendously moving and powerful

Full of sly fun, lovely comic observation and an almost tangible pleasure in storytelling

Refreshingly authentic . . . Eilis is so vivid it's difficult to believe she did not actually exist

Entertaining

A darkly humorous story about friendship

Intrigue, hatred and accusations - phew, it kept me guessing to the end

The textures of the world Wolitzer describes feel satisfyingly right… Wolitzer holds attention with her warm grasp of character and careful, probing working out of personality under the forces of time and trauma’

Meg Wolitzer bores into the barbed tangles of contemporary feminism with disarming charm… Captures the ambition and angst of growing up with warmth and wisdom in a book that’s at once searingly intelligent and gloriously light.

Meg Wolitzer's tale of feminism's generational differences is much richer than mere polemical tract

An effortless read

Bustling, large-hearted... The Female Persuasion discusses timely issues of feminism...but does so through fully realised characters

it deftly interweaves the political with the personal... clear and smart

[Woltizer is] interested in the complexities of being female… This is an unashamedly traditional novel of ideas, not afraid to boldly inhabit the moment we live in

A significant contribution to Wolitzer’s body of work

Wolitzer’s prose is direct and engaging… her characters feel alive and individual

My favourite book of the year… Wolitzer deserves more recognition: she is as talented a storyteller as Donna Tartt, as funny as Jonathan Franzen, but she has her own distinct brilliance

Wolitzer is an empathy delivery system

The end will leave you simmering with impotent rage, which sounds about right for 2018

There’s lots to enjoy here – the plot is pacy and you’ll come to care and deeply invest in these characters through Wolitzer’s brilliantly sharp prose

- Meg Wolitzer captures the zeitgeist like no one else

[W]arm and witty, and necessary… With affection and generosity, Wolitzer exposes the limits of power