Funny, warm and enriching.

Truthful, hilarious, painfully sad

Gloriously triumphant...confirms Doyle as the best novelist of his generation

It is 1968. Paddy Clarke is ten years old, breathless with discovery. He reads with a child's voraciousness, collecting facts the way adults collect grey hairs and parking tickets. Doyle captures the speech patterns of childhood brilliantly, the weird logic of the incessant questions, the non-sequiturs and wonderments... Like all great comic writers, Roddy Doyle has become an explorer of the deepest places of the heart, of love and pain and loss. This is one of the most compelling novels I've read in ages, a triumph of style and perception

Extraordinary technical achievement and emotional force

One of the truest and funniest presentations of juvenile experience in any recent literature

Brimming with sadness, but full of fun

The best literary novel (and best book, full stop) that I read in 2019 was My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh. It is that incredibly rare book hyped as being "hilarious" which is actually funny... It's also a devastating satire of WASP culture, psychiatrists and New York.

[My Year of Rest and Relaxation is] a laugh-out-loud page-turner... it’s also the best 9/11 novel I’ve read.

Moshfegh’s blackly funny new novel… [hits] multiple marks at once: as an art-school prank, a between-the-lines tale of displaced grief and a pitiless anatomy of gender injustice, it also offers… a dark state-of-America fable.

Ottessa Moshfegh’s unnerving and compelling new novel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation… percussively hammered out in her flawless, rhythmic prose… concludes with a startlingly, unexpectedly beautiful passage… radical, urgent, and more painfully wise than perhaps we would like to admit.

[Ottessa Moshfegh] has been hailed in America as a saviour of literary fiction... she specialises in anti-heroines who won’t jump through the usual hoops of womanhood... [My Year of Rest of Relaxation is] the kind of wickedly funny book you can tear through in an afternoon.

Ottessa Moshfegh’s second novel is as arresting as her first… A study of alienation and dislocation, Ms Moshfegh's compelling novel is filled with warped desires and reckless pursuits, but also with wisdom and warmth.

An arresting, original read… [Moshfegh] has a singular instinct for the jangled interiority of loners and outsiders… a scoop direct from the places to which the human mind plummets in private… This is a novel of immense and yet very ordinary human sadness. That is a lot to achieve.

There is no doubt that My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a magnificent satire… As ever, Moshegh shimmers with intelligence and wit.

Viciously funny… Moshfegh’s writing is as lethally efficient as a flick-knife.

Savage, funny, frequently on the verge of teetering into lunacy… [My Year of Rest and Relaxation] is a non-negotiable in your holiday carry-on this summer.

The boldest literary statement of passive resistance since Herman Melville’s scrivener famously declared “I would prefer not to”… [a] deliciously dark and unsettling modern fairytale.

[Moshfegh is] one of America's brightest and brashest literary talents—and My Year of Rest and Relaxation is another bold assault on the status quo.

This may be the finest existential novel not written by a French author… A nervy modern-day rebellion tale that isn’t afraid to get dark or find humor in the darkness.

I was cringing during every moment of Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and yet I could not put the book down... Moshfegh’s protagonist is brutally dreary, and the brutality of her dreariness is often very funny, but the book is really... about the realness of a more subtle and very private expression of pain.

It's not often that I pick up a book and get a new favorite author. But that's pretty close to what happened... She’s the real thing.

Both refined and depraved… My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a page-turner.

My Year Of Rest And Relaxation is blisteringly funny, perceptive, knowing and shows how so many of us lead disaffected, alienated lives even without becoming narcotic recluses.

You’ll emerge from this darkly hilarious novel not necessarily rested or relaxed but more finely attuned to how delicately fraught the human condition can be.

This is destined to be one of the summer’s most buzzed-about books.

Moshfegh’s ear remains as merciless as ever. Like a latter-day Flaubert, she delights in vanity and mediocrity, and in the absurdist heights both can reach whenever the occasion calls for a few sincere words.

Moshfegh’s sly new novel is… a strange, compelling tale of existential angst.

[The] premise makes me instantly want to reach for the book and hide with it for the next few hours.

[Moshfegh] delights in creating fiction…like a magician who performs her best tricks without any props.

[With] deadpan, unembellished prose recalling the cadences of Joan Didion and the clear-eyed candor of Mary Gaitskill… My Year of Rest and Relaxation is most convincing as an urbane dark comedy, sharp-eyed satire leavened by passages of morbid sobriety, as in a perverse fusion of Sex and the City and Requiem for a Dream.

Ottessa Moshfegh pulls off an unlikely premise, demonstrating once again the unsettling energy, daring plotting and biting observations that have earned her literary prizes and praise from the start of her career.

Moshfegh’s managed to produce a funny, acerbic and captivating novel from both a heroine we ought to hate (a rich kid bored with the life of plenty) and a plot that’s almost tautologically sedate (nap after blackout after nap after blackout)… it’s invigorating… what raises this book above the masses is Moshfegh’s wit, her invention, and her unflinching eye for the grotesque; anything could happen to our narrator and we’d keep on reading, because Moshfegh would make it sound unerringly interesting.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a merciless comedian of vanity and frailty.

Intoxicating… [My Year of Rest and Relaxation] is the boldest literary statement of passive resistance since Herman Melville’s scrivener… It speaks to Moshfegh’s storytelling skills that an account of someone sleep for a year is as gripping as My Year of Rest and Relaxation reads.

The writing is precise and hilarious, as well as disturbing and dark.

Moshfegh’s characters are often so funny in and about their unhappiness that we don’t want them to escape it, or not yet… My Year of Rest and Relaxation is written in multiple modes at once: comedy and tragedy and farce, blurring into one another, climbing on top of one another.

A shocking, hilarious and strangely tender novel.

I love this book. It's funny, I find it intriguing and Moshfegh has a dark voice. I started reading her and thought, 'This sounds like a female Bret Easton Ellis'.

Enthralling. The voice is compelling and witty, drawing one into the experience.

The black comedy draws you in and the mysteries, twists and turns keep you there.

Whip-smart and bleakly funny.

The most inspiring novel of recent years.

Depressing, dystopian, dry and dark, but also strangely comforting and full of the joy of innocent fantasy of withdrawing from a hostile world.

Moshfegh's stunning 2018 novel has a haunting ending... [and] relentlessly vicious humour.

This razor sharp satirical novel has achieved near mythical status... [a] compelling and clever take on a female character that isn't afraid to speak her mind

Ottessa is one of our newest, most dazzling, daring and outrageous voices in literature

Blisteringly funny and keenly perceptive.

Deeply affecting, crackling with wit, and consistently magnificent.

A globe-trotting, kaleidoscopic portrait of Irish siblings and their difficult mother.

A magnificent novel about family and belonging told in stark yet sparkling prose.

A fierce, funny, loosely woven family saga.

[A] darkly glinting novel of family life.

A bravura example of shifting voices and perspectives, all of which benefit from Enright’s splendid prose and careful restraint.

Enright dissects [her character’s] foibles with warmth, wit and a bracing lack of sentimentality.

A book you don’t put down until it is finished, dragging you right into the heart of another Irish family as only Anne Enright can.

A family saga, beginning with intense and beautifully detailed character studies.

I... enjoyed The Green Road for the dialogue, the clever narrative structure, and the gnarled, contemporary sense of family values.

I could not put it down. Chapter two is a masterpiece.

Stylish prose that charts the fortunes and misfortunes of this family over a period of 25 years.

In this brilliant, captivating novel, the poised, impossible and always disappointed matriarch Rosaleen Madigan makes life difficult for her children at a Christmas gathering.

Few Novelists pick apart domestic relationships with the poetry and precision of Anne Enright.

Sharp yet oh so subtle storytelling […] this is an author at the height of her formidable powers.

An exquisitely written portrait of a family, and a country, on the cusp of enormous change.

Exquisitely written and hugely enjoyable.

A brilliant approach to the sadness of a disconnected family, who are like satellites out of sync.

Enright’s virtuosic tale of an Irish family- the Madigans- across continents and decades withholds closure but doesn’t skimp on pleasure

A compelling novel, full of astute observations, beautifully written, sometimes stark and other times aching with longing

The sweep of the book and Anne Enright's way fo pulling this global migratuon story together with such energy and detail puts her in somewhere beside Toni Morrison

Heart-wrenching novel… The surgical precision of Enright’s writing makes you feel that she can, in Wordsworth’s words, “see into the life of things”. There is a singing simplicity to it that tugs at your heart…A masterly work.

Beautifully observed. Enright is a great writer.

Bold and brilliant.

Incredible… I’m totally captivated.

An evocative story about family ties and belonging.

A brilliant read.

A story of fracture and family, selfishness and compassion.

Sharply funny portrait of an Irish family meeting for a final Christmas.

Within pages I was wrapped in the warmth of Enright’s prose… This is a beautiful book… Enright is unquestionably a fantastic writer who, for me with this novel, conjured up the world of a family with all its highs and lows that felt like they might be having this reunion down the end of your road… Enright does two of my favourite things in fiction. She makes the ordinary, and everything we take for granted, seem extra ordinary. She also gives voices to those who have not been able to share their tales… The writing is stunning.

An evocative story about family ties and belonging. Anne Enright is deservedly a well-respected writer.

Enright's novels are fantastically well-crafted, eloquent and funny… Each character is beautifully realized… She finds unexpected adjectives, brilliantly exact description, the spot-on emotion. Her writing is lyrical but always unsentimental. There is pleasure in reading every paragraph, and an enormous wisdom throughout the pages.

Truly wonderful… The dialogue is particularly brilliant… It completely envelops you in the story and will leave you wanting more.

Wonderful… The dialogue is particularly brilliant, capturing all the barbed snappiness of dinner with siblings.

I fell headfirst into the beautifully written prose of this novel, so authentic and charming in its telling of one Irish family over more than two decades. Each vibrant character gets a turn in almost short stories of their own that feel almost like entities in their own right. I adored it.

A resonant, masterly work.

[An] exceptional novel.

This is a flawless book, it’s utterly flawless… It has just touched so many other readers. This book is heartbreaking… A beautiful examination of unhappy families… The power of Anne’s writing is you all see a reflection of your own family…it’s tender and it’s beautiful and deserves to be widely read.

Enright is undoubtedly one of our most prominent novelists