Author:Laurent Quintreau,Polly McLean

Eleven executives are seated round a meeting room table. Their voices make up this novel. The president harangues them about cost cutting, restructuring, redundancy. As they feign attention the reader is privy to their most intimate thoughts.
There's the self-destructive violence of the former chief executive, the depraved cynicism of the man on the make, the gruelling daily routine of a working mother, the glacial despair of the HR director, the libidinous fantasies of the career bureaucrat. All have one thing in common: each of them, from the depths of their frustration, is at war with all the others.
At the centre of this Divine Comedy, like Lucifer with a business school sheen, reigns Rorty, the president, a blue-eyed corporate assassin. Gross Margin is a savage and hilarious novel about contemporary office life.
It's appallingly funny... Quintreau's eye is so sharp, the details so accurate, each character's remarks so incisive and funny that you howl with laughter when reading Gross Margin. But you keep thinking about it, not without some anxiety.
—— Le MondeGross Margin is a ferocious and riotous attack on the corporate jungle.
—— Livres HebdoThey open windows in the mind and then fail to close them all, so that, putting down one of their books, you feel a cold breeze still lifting the hairs on the back of your neck.
—— The New York TimesA maestra's portrait of her age. . . remarkable
—— GuardianFew writers today can make a more compelling claim to singularity of innovation and sustained brilliance
—— TLSThe bravura performance of a writer, poised at the edge of the day's vast darkness, gathering all the warmth and light of our inner summer
—— The Washington PostSmith bring[s] this brilliant quartet to a satisfying close
—— NPRThe final flourish of a mazy and beautiful quartet
—— TelegraphSublime
—— The Boston GlobeBrilliant
—— The ScotsmanThe novel's hopeful message about the healing power of friendship ensures the quartet ends on a feel-good note
—— Sunday TimesA remarkable experiment with timeliness in fiction
—— Literary ReviewWonderful... unsettling and deeply affecting - the writing is beautifully spare, and captures with such clarity what it means for these four young women to be taught to hope for everything and yet continuously to receive nothing
—— Rosie Price, author of WHAT RED WASIf I Had Your Face is a vivid, eviscerating depiction of social realism in contemporary Seoul. Frances Cha renders gender and class struggles with forensic detail, in a luminous voice both knowledgeable and compelling.
—— Sharlene Teo, author of 'Ponti'I love the way Frances Cha rotates between mindsets to look at how beauty and privilege influence the way women live, whilst maintaining a sly lightness
—— Rebecca Watson, author of 'little scratch'Make way for Frances Cha, an entrancing new voice who guides us into the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul... I devoured it in a single sitting, and so will you.
—— Janice Lee, NYT Bestselling Author of THE PIANO TEACHERI loved this book. It offers a fascinating window on a place and culture I knew little about, and yet from the first page it was intensely relatable - I recognised these women like friends, colleagues or sisters. Invigorating in its honesty and near-filmic in its descriptive power, If I Had Your Face is brilliantly-drawn tableau of the universalities of womanhood, the pressures we grapple with, and the way female bonds can carry us through.
—— Lauren Bravo, author of WHAT WOULD THE SPICE GIRLS DO?Cha's striking first novel follows four young women in Seoul, South Korea trapped in a sphere of impossible beauty standards
—— Oprah Magazine, Most Anticipated Books of 2020A story of four women in Seoul and the way that economic and social realities determine the paths available to them
—— The Millions, Most AnticipatedAn intimate, panoramic debut... An enthralling read from the very first page.
—— Ed Park, Author of PERSONAL DAYS and Hemingway Foundation / PEN Award FinalistA provoking, ultimately inspiring tale of women pushing back against oppressive customs both traditional and new . . . Frances Cha, like her quartet of narrators, has a rebel's heart
—— Jonathan Dee, author of THE LOCALSAn endearing story of female friendship staged against a backdrop of elitism, sexism and the relentless quest for cosmetic perfection... Enthralling
—— Vanity FairAn insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice
—— Publishers WeeklyCha's timely debut deftly explores the impact of impossible beauty standards and male-dominated family money on South Korean women
—— KirkusAn eye-opening story of female friendship set against the brutal beauty standards of south Korea
—— GlamourMesmerizing... weaves together the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul, in an ultimately uplifting story of women living in defiance of oppressive customs
—— DazedA gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal
—— BookRiotA gripping portrait of four young women in South Korea... its focus on the tangled and complicated nature of female friendship is universally familiar and fascinating
—— Refinery 29Hypnotising... you won't want to put it down until the very last page
—— Harper's BazaarYou'll find sisterhood at the heart of this ambitious book
—— New York Times Book ReviewTremain's extraordinary imagination has produced a powerful, unsettling novel in which two worlds and cultures collide
—— Cath Kidson MagazineTremain writes about this part of France so well because she has known it since childhood, and she captures a sensuality in the landscape that is both attractive and eerie... It is an enthralling book about the catastrophic disruption honesty can bring
—— Siobhan Kane , Irish TimesThe novel has all the formal structure of a medieval morality tale, along with its traditional dichotomies: rus and urbe, avarice and asceticism, chastity and lust
—— GuardianRose Tremain's thrilling Trespass is set in an obsure valley in Southern France... To be read slowly; Tremain's writing is too exquisite to hurry
—— The TimesTimeless but rooted; tangible but otherworldly. Meticulously plotted, with the musty sadness that comes of cleaving to the past, Trespass will reward your reading time
—— Scotland on SundayRose Tremain's novel begins with a scream and barely loosens its grip amid the sumptuously written pages that follow...subtly harnesses the stifling heat and dangerously feral landscape of southern France to unspool a psychologically disconcerting story of family skeletons and outsider tensions
—— MetroLike a sinister edition of A Place In the Sun directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with the depth and subtlety that make the book far more than a mere thriller
—— You Magazine (Daily Mail)