He's a marvellous writer... He's very, very good

A story of the traumas of sex and class. My favourite moment is the one where Magwitch makes his stumbling way up the shadowy staircase towards an unnerved but unsuspecting Pip: the halting but inexorable rise of the repressed 'from the darkness beneath'

This was the author's last great work, the defects in it are as nearly imperceptible as spots on the sun or shadows on a sunlit sea

I would always prefer to go get another Dickens off the shelf than pick up a new book by someone I've not read yet... I love the tradition of Dickens, where even the most minor walk-on characters are twitching and particular and alive

There is no one Dickens novel I could pick over all the others. Dickens is huge-like the sky. Pick any page of Dickens and it's immediately recognizable as him, yet he might be doing social satire, or farce, or horror, or a psychological study of a murderer-or any combination of these

Hoffman is, in many ways, that much-misunderstood phenomenon: a novelist of ideas...This central idea of her work...is what makes the novels she has produced to date (every one a genuine page-turner) both more interesting and more rewarding than either Hollywood, or some critics, realise

Skylight Confessions leaves us sad, yet satisfied, as though we have eaten something bitter yet organic. The Greeks might have called the feeling catharsis...the Moodys are reminiscent of an ancient tragic house

Fans of The Time Traveller's Wife will love this... this is a magical, heartbreaking book

Alice Hoffman is my favourite writer

Friction is a bellow of rage and disgust at the eagerness with which the 21st century soul attenuates itself. That this trivia-obsessed, pornography-fraught and digitised-to-death world that we have made for ourselves can produce such high art, and with such slicing satirical humour, is one of the central paradoxes, and causes for celebration, of our age

Neill bucks the chick-lit trend with prose that's clever and endearing, and frazzled parents will love the way she nails the sticky, hair-pulling mania of domestic life

A deftly executed domestic comedy

Hilarious . . . Plays with the chaos and comedy of 30-something metropolitan maternity and brings it to an unexpectedly moving conclusion