A masterpiece

Flanagan's masterpiece

Lyrical and hilarious, tender and wildly angry by turns, it dazzlingly reconceives the form of the novel

Gould's Book of Fish is a novel about fish in the way that Moby-Dick is a novel about whales, Ulysses is a novel about the events of a single day

A vivid, voluptuous, exhilarating writer

Hugely original... Passages burn with the intense pleasure of story-making, of the abandon that comes from a seething of ideas and their joyful mutation into words

A seamless masterpiece of the grotesque

Outstanding

As beautiful to look at as it was enthralling to read

Hugely involving, clever, witty and tender

Magical-realist colonial-protest novel, Borgesian found-manuscript tale, anti-Enlightenment Foucauldian fable, shaggy dog story, parody, satire on modern Tasmania - the list could go on... Flanagan somehow makes it work on the page - largely through the mighty voice he has devised for Gould, which echoes with rageful humour

Bewitching... Flanagan's writing has the unmistakable shimmer of literary star quality

I have read nothing finer than Gould's Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan. Lyrical and hilarious, tender and wildly angry by turns, it reimagines the grim early history of Tasmania and at the same time dazzlingly reconceives the form of the novel

Magic realism meets barbarism. Equal parts fantastical and grotesque

Uniquely moving love story.

Kennedy is never less than illuminating.

[Kennedy is] witty, sharp, almost too intelligent and a bit provocative.

An uplifting tale of the triumph of niceness over nastiness.

A writer of exquisite precision… A public novel, angrily political… Expressing her idea of a writer’s social responsibility so eloquently… Well-suited to Kennedy’s talent and her characteristically oblique and original way of seeing the world.

What sets this novel apart is Kennedy’s physical and emotional sensitivity to both solitude and tenderness.

Absorbing… Serious without being solemn, sweet without being sickly, it’s an elegant tale about the unexpected places where kindness and sympathy can flourish and deepen.

Kennedy’s comedy is ruthlessly observed – an anti-romance that warms into something moving and profound. It’s also a brilliant portrait of city living.

Two lonely people go about their day in London in this typically Kennedian and utterly wonderful novel… but they find their way towards each other in an agonising love story that’s all about morality and decency in a careless world… Kennedy is a stand-up comedian, and observational comedy runs through this novel in interior monologues that are heartbreakingly familiar and laugh-out-loud sad. Her sentences are some of the best in modern fiction (there’s a springer spaniel called Hector with “black, bewildered ears… [that] made him look as if he’d recently heard dreadful news and still hadn’t adjusted.”) and reading her prose is like eating those fizzy sweets that are both sweet and sour make you wince at the back of your mouth – then go back for more… It’s gorgeous.

Consistently raw and powerful… emotionally exhausting… But there’s a lot to be said for a novel which sets so much store by “affection and tenderness”, and in which the emotional peaks and the possibilities of redemption and renewal are marked by the simple holding of hands.

I love, love, love the Rushdie – I think it’s my favourite of his… The fantasy elements are just magical and, of course, it’s gorgeously written.

An apocalyptic battle between reason and unreason, good and evil, light and darkness, with all the bells and whistles of a Hollywood blockbuster.

Not only a beautifully written satire-as-fairytale but the subject matter is bang on trend… That Rushdie should still be writing so potently and still be continuing to push back the frontiers, when he could easily pull up a deck chair and languish on the frontiers he already owns is wonderful, inspirational and profoundly (but only in the best way) terrifying… 10/10, Master.

Ambitious, smart and dark fable that is full of rich and profound notions about human nature.

I like to think how many readers are going to admire the courage of this book, revel in its fierce colours, its boisterousness, humour and tremendous pizzazz, and take delight in its generosity of spirit.