Transportive and immersive.

This searching and eloquent novel muses on identity, love and belonging.

Bristling with life and passion and wit.

Hame treads a line between light-hearted satire and a discussion on notions of home and belonging… A hugely entertaining, roller-coaster of a ride through poetry and language

Richly textured… The emotional complexity of the writing matches the landscape of the island and its surroundings.

There are joyful winks and allusions everywhere... an affectionate rebuke to Scots nationalists who pretend that questions of national identity are straightforward... 'hame' isn't so much where you're born, as where you hing yer bunnet'

Real historical figures interact with the fictional ones, blurring the book’s boundaries. It’s an immersive world, from smoky pubs in 1960s Edinburgh, filled with arguing poets, to the lovely descriptions of the island of Fascaray... Settle in your own home and explore.

Ultimately, Hame is a novel about identity; both with specific regard to Scottish character and nationalism and to broader questions of how we attach ourselves to people over place, or vice versa, and of how we construct our personal life stories.

A remarkable performance.

Exploration of the idea that identity is a creative construct, not just the product of geography, but the imagination.

Hame is a sweet and quaint novel, full of just-in-time revelations and obvious fondness.

Hame is an ambitious and multi-layered tome… McAfee’s attention to detail is remarkable. She covers great swathes of history and goes to enormous lengths to flesh out even minor characters… McAfee’s deadpan humour means much of the book is wryly amusing.

If Hame often comes over like a more cheerful version of a Sarah Moss novel, it’s also sneakily political at a time when a hard Brexit dangles the prospect of a Great British break-up… Be careful what you wish for – or at least how you wish for it – seems to be the message; but while Hame’s pivotal revelation first lands with the force of a raspberry blown in the face of nationalism, it’s typical of the novel’s generosity that it finally feels like more of a kiss.

A clever patchwork blanket of narratives… It’s very convincing, despite being entirely fictional.

Gorgeous

Partly a gentle satire and partly a genuine celebration of Scotland written by the London-born daughter of Scottish parents, Hame is written with wit and intelligence.

A remarkable book which looks at its subject with, in equal parts, revulsion, lust, love and anger. The clarity with which Louis examines the interweaving causes and effects of masculinity, adolescence, shame and community on the working class are unparalleled in anything I’ve read before. It is ultimately the story of growing up as an economic and sexual outsider; a vital piece of work for our time

The End of Eddy is a remarkable book, powerful, frank, moving and, at the same time, carefully crafted and devoid of sentimentality or self-pity. Most importantly, in writing reminiscent of the unflinching gaze of Zola's social novels, The End of Eddy reveals the huge damage done by poverty and ignorance in a society that, for all its affluence, reduces its most vulnerable to a condition of banal horror

The End of Eddy is lean and poignant and masterfully tells the tale of growing up gay, poor, and bullied. No one has told this story as eloquently

Like a cannonball spilled off the side of a ship, Édouard Louis makes straight for the deeps. The End of Eddy is heart-crushing, soul-stabbing, astonishing, exhilarating. Édouard Louis is exactly the kind of writer we need right now: honest, fearless and, yes, tough

Édouard Louis speaks of violence, both social and familial, with tremendous force and feeling. Revelatory, queerly tough, as intellectual as it is impolite, The End of Eddy is a book to shake you up

A bracingly pitiless account of the psychic and physical violence that lies at the root of masculine identity. Louis's remarkably visceral story of growing up queer in working class France quickly transcends its setting precisely because it delivers us into it with such emotional force

In stark, unsentimental prose Louis… unblinkingly documents the violence, masochism and racism of rural France in a book that pulses with power

Edouard has produced a critical study of the conservatism of small communities, and an exploration of how we reconcile our individual nature with what is expected of us

An absorbing story… It’s become food for thought for the masses, a type of which the political elite never approve

A scarifying joy

A savage account of growing up poor, gay and victimised in rural France.

Moving, funny, with ingenious emotional intelligence, it’s one to read and read again.

Barnes’s novel chronicles their romance with an austere tenderness

[Barnes’s] facility for writing artfully conceived and executed novels about unfulfilled, disappointed lives has risen to almost unassailable heights.

Julian Barnes writes shockingly well about emotion… The Only Story is devastating and wonderful.

A solemn-ish meditation on the fallibility of memory… A love story – bitter and sweet in parts – unfurls.

Exquisitely written, flawlessly imagined, The Mermaid & Mrs Hancock's siren song - of courtesans and merchants, shipwrecks and wonders, love and grief, ambition and passion - will echo like the ocean in a seashell long after the last page is turned.

[A] gripping debut… independence, love, class, death and gender stereotypes — are skilfully explored here through a late 18th-century lens

Beautifully written, sinuous, enchanting, brilliantly researched, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock goes deep into the eighteenth century - its grand front rooms, the secret places, the streets and the ocean that changed everything about Britain and it lays bare the hearts of a cast of unforgettable characters

This story really is spellbinding, an unforgettable jewel of a novel, filled to the brim with intelligence, heart and wit.

Beautifully written… By turns bawdy, witty and moving this is a glorious romp through Georgian London, in “the age of unlikely ascents”. With a truly gorgeous package á la The Essex Serpent, it deserves to be huge

Delightful… A gloriously immersive read, bringing Georgian London vividly to life… The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock impresses with Gowar’s attention to vivid and sensual detail

Its energy, characterisation and great sense of period completely seduced me.

An utterly absorbing read.

A gorgeously immersive novel.

Stunning.

In 2018 [mermaids] are back in vogue.

A terrific debut

The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock is the rare book that actually lives up to its hype and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t this year’s The Essex Serpent. Lush, vivid descriptions of 1780s Soho, proto-feminism, sparkly dialogue and a pleasingly irreverent style, it’s historical fiction even for people who don’t like historical fiction.

A tale of love, family and social status movingly told.

An absorbing tale of curiosity and obsession… Gowar’s prose is marvellous… There’s a beautiful balance of rhythm and intrigue, and an eye for what brings a book alive.

The most anticipated novel of the year.

An accomplished, captivating debut novel.

- The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a roistering, swaggering, bawdy novel… [a] confident and accomplished debut

Lush, vivid descriptions of 1780s Soho, proto-feminism, sparkly dialogue and a pleasingly irreverent style.

Prose that’s as effervescent as it is intelligent.

Gowar’s prose shimmers.

Rich and humorous, it’s a heady period whirl with a magic realist twist.

A highly impressing debut… An absorbing tale of sex, money, ambition and the lure of the new.

Gowar’s wonderful novel expertly captures that sense of a more fluid society… An engrossing and well-paced novel, shot through with melancholy, yet filled with wonder and desire. The sort of book you lose yourself in for days.

Imogen Hermes Gowar’s bawdy, picturesque romp through the heady miasma of Georgian London is easily one of the most wonderfully immersive, richly drawn books I’ve read in years… This piece of historical fiction is really something special… Some truly exquisite writing.

All-consuming and spellbinding.

Gowar's writing is energetic, and she has wonderful attention both to physical and emotional detail and to the circumstances that constrain lives

This glittering debut novel examines every rung of 18th-century London’s social ladder with keen wit and in delicious detail

A Dazzling account of dreams and desire in Georgian London