The dramatic and metaphorical strands of Marcus’s narrative are densely woven, and Ellie is a winning protagonist… But it is the sensitively drawn sorrows and vulnerabilities of the novel’s adults that are perhaps most affecting

A magic-tinged look at adult problems through the eyes of a child.

A soaring success; beautiful and devastating… In graceful prose, Marcus sketches an image of the North Yorkshire coast then adds the snap of the cold wind, the sting of sea spray, the hotness of welling tears. The book is stunningly evocative – of a time, of a place, of childhood, and of what it means not to fit in… This book is beautiful, from cover to core.

A poignant and powerful exploration of mental health, poverty and identity, all seen through the eyes of a child… Marcus builds a compelling world which combines the mundane with the mystical, the domestic with the mythic… Marcus has created a memorable young heroine who possesses the same kind of innocent intelligence, forthright self-assurance and aching vulnerability as Harper Lee’s Scout in To Kill A Mockingbird… A heart-warming and deeply affecting portrayal of a very special father-daughter relationship

In How Saints Die Carmen Marcus announces herself as a powerful and original talent. This is a novel as restless, as seductive and as dangerous as the sea that forms the backdrop to the story, while in Ellie Fleck Marcus has created one of the great child protagonists. A compelling story with a warm heart written in language that is both vivid and raw. I loved this book.

Remarkable and compelling… An incredibly moving, piercingly well-observed account of adult mental breakdown and its reverberations as seen from a child’s perspective

Carmen Marcus is a North Yorkshire poet, and I enjoyed her first novel, How Saints Die. Ten-year-old Ellie is the daughter of a fisherman who struggles to cope when her mum becomes unwell, and her narrative is haunted by seafarers’ legends.

Enchanting and lyrical debut novel… lightly written, yet profound and heartfelt

I’m under the spell of an extraordinary book… Everything Under [is] a gift from a wise and empathetic friend who understands the gypsy gift of storytelling – to transcend and enthral.

A triumph: a novel that feels inexorable, messy and profound all at once.

[Daisy Johnson’s] first novel confirms not only her talent, but her ambition… Johnson’s dense, begrimed retelling [of the Oedipus myth] hums with an electricity pylon-charge of danger, and her sentences repeatedly flare with startling, visceral coinages.

Infused with dark fairy tale, Oedipal tragedy and Freudian desire, this is a brambly, atmospheric and immersive tale… Johnson’s [Everything Under] shines in its use of language.

A weird and wonderful revisioning of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex… Johnson writes with a mesmerising blend of the naturalistic and the surreal, spinning physical descriptions of muscular beauty… This is a novel that drives to its tragic outcome with the twisting but unstoppable logic of a river to the sea.

A hybrid of Alexander Trocchi’s 1954 murder-on-a-canal novel Young Adam and Angela Carter at her most witchy and far-out, Everything Under is creative writing of distinction.

A deeply involving, unsettling novel that pulls the reader into a uniquely eerie yet recognisable world.

Johnson excels at making psychic phenomena feel visceral.

As readable as it is dazzling, full of unsettling twists and dark revelations

Surprising, gorgeously written, and profoundly unsettling, this genderfluid retelling of Oedipus Rex will sink into your bones and stay there.

Hypnotic, disquieting and thrilling. A concoction of folklore, identity and belonging which sinks its fangs into the heart of you.

Everything Under seeped through to my bones. Reaching new depths hinted at in Fen, language and landscape turn strange, full of creeping horror and beauty. It is precise in its terror, and its tenderness. An ancient myth masterfully remade for our uncertain times.

A fantastically dark reinvention of the myth of Oedipus… a complicated but deeply satisfying novel.

This is a thrilling novel… Like Daisy Johnson’s startling debut, the short-story collection Fen, this lyrical, multi-layered novel explores her deep love and understanding of the natural world and shadowy people eking out a living close to it. She writes beautifully and vividly… with a brooding atmosphere that draws the reader into an uncanny and menacing watery world. It is exquisitely written, but very affecting.

Explores femininity, family and identity with a timeline and narrators that eddy and clash like sticks thrown into a river... like a current, it soon carries you away.

[Daisy Johnson's] first collection Fen drew comparisons to Angela Carter and Graham Swift and there is an otherworldly, folkloric tinge to her inventive first novel although it is set in modern-day, rural England... Beautiful.

Everything Under is an unusual and eerily atmospheric read from new talent Daisy Johnson.

Encompassing myth, fairy tale and haunting language, Johnson's earthy and timeless depictions of gender and sexuality turn an old tale into something entirely current.

Impressive.

Everything Under is otherworldly and captivating… a book that is as beautifully human as it is delightfully strange.

Barbed, gripping and marvellously written.

A lovely novel following the author’s usual theme of hope and regret, renewal and contentment

Tyler has the ability to bring character to life in just a few sentences

Anne Tyler’s astute new novel Clock Dance is fuelled by kindness, kindness that begins tentatively with false starts and blind spots and grows into the extravagant all-encompassing sort

I loved Clock Dance

Warmly appealing and sharply observant...combines comic relish with psychological and social shrewdness. Characters pulse with lifelikeness. Dialogue crackles with authenticity. Changes brought about by time are fascinatedly and fascinatingly observed

A moving, often spiky study of relationships and the far-reaching effects of trauma

A thought-provoking story that resonates with emotional depth

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

A very compelling read… hilarious and depressing and rage-inducing in equal measures.

Absorbing.

Lyrical, bleakly comic and, ultimately, intensely affecting

It is a necessary and compelling book, and this year’s must read

Rachel Kushner’s exhaustive research into what goes on within these walls

Kushner’s high-definition, high-impact prose is as electrifying as it is daring

The momentum of the novel resides in its prose, the spring and sass of a voice so vivid it can largely dispense with the mechanics of plot

A salty and hilarious novel from one of America's best living novelists.

Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room should be a favourite [to win the Man Booker Prize]. If you like your escapism as gritty as it gets, prepare to be hooked by this unflinching account of a female prisoner serving a double life sentence... The Mars Room is rarely easy reading, but the furore of voices and violence and injustice throws you right into the story and keeps you immersed there.

Kushner’s novel is a timely reminder that a country’s authoritarian tendencies can be most easily measured by the number of people it deems unworthy of freedom

Rachel Kushner knows how to sniff out a good character.

Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room immerses you in the life of a high-security women’s prison in California, its central character Romy – accused of killing her stalker – both gritty and fragile. This was not a subject I thought would grip me, but in Kushner’s firm hands I was entranced. Much of the book is autobiographical – while never in prison herself, Kushner was the daughter of Beatniks and allowed to roam the dodgier areas of San Francisco as a teenager. The characters range from bullet-headed killers to a well-meaning male teacher whose ambiguities are brilliantly done. Romy’s trans friend Conan, “shoulders as broad as the aisle, and a jawline beard”, is delightfully free of the politically correct, while the style veers excitingly from straight narrative to scribbled lists like whimpers of despair.

Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room was a hot favourite on this year's Booker shortlist, and it's easy to see why… Kushner's atmospheric writing is compelling to the last.

Kushner’s writing is the most marvellous I read this year… time and again I found myself rereading paragraphs of The Mars Room for her perfectly turned sentences, the music of her prose

[A] brilliantly compelling read