The work of a novelist in her prime… The narrative is taut and suspenseful, the characterization complex and dynamic.

Brilliantly drawn… Atmosphere and characters linger long after the novel ends

Deft, intriguing and gripping. Forster never disappoints.

This is Margaret Forster's last novel, sadly, and it's full of reminders of what made her such a shrewd and arresting chronicler of women’s lives

An exemplary final work … wonderfully well-observed

It is Forster’s acute scrutiny of the economy of friendship that hooks.

Her simple, direct prose never strikes a false note

Amply displays her formidable talent as a storyteller, undiminished to the end, and her marvellous ability to anatomise the lives of her characters while still enabling them to emerge fully realised in the reader’s imagination… The novel is a rich inquiry into the nature of friendship… Forster is, as ever, brilliant at the telling details that illuminate her characters’ inner lives… A fine last novel by an outstanding writer, it will disappoint neither longstanding admirers nor newcomers to Forster’s work. Above all, it is a novel about the abiding human need to love and to be loved, a need that Forster makes clear is beyond measurement.

Forster is very good at the slow reveal, gradually illuminating the more questionable aspects of Tara's character as well as the crime that changed her life. She's also brilliant on the complexities of ordinary people, particularly women: the little ways they deceive themselves, their quickness to judge and their clumsy determination to be kind

Quietly compelling.

Margaret Forster writes the most amazing prose, tight without a superfluous word and still with the ability to convey crystal clear images to the reader… She weaves loyalty, betrayal, friendship, honour and honesty with wonderful characterisation into an absorbing story.

Characters are cleverly drawn and the north/south divide well depicted

Margaret Forster…excelled at writing about complex relationships between women… Forster’s skill is to show how very different characters shift and develop according to what life throws at them.

A more nuanced take on the potential recuperative powers of the rural environment than many others novels written in this vein.

The first five chapters of Forester’s novel are a remarkable exercise in withholding and revelation by minute increments… There is much in it to admire, from the distinctive resonance of her deceptively plain style to her descriptions of landscape.

Margaret Forster is excellent at painting the picture and her dialogue is always A1.

Funny and warm, heartbreaking too. Impressive debut!

emotional, raw, deeply moving and…funny too

...a really rather good YA crossover ... while Khorsandi's novel tackles some pretty big subjects, it does so while making you laugh out loud

I really couldn’t put this book down. It’s not just for young people but if you have a teenage daughter, please make her read it.

I am loving Shappi Khorsandi's Nina is Not OK, she is making me care about 'Nina' so much that I get anxious on her behalf

Thematically taut and compulsively paced.

A very good novel of anxiety, embarrassment and also, somehow, the depths of Englishness.

Marvellous, original and intelligent. Kunzru writes like a master storyteller... There's simply nothing [he] couldn't manage in prose

Publisher's description. Electrifying, subversive and wildly original, White Tears is a ghost story and a love story, a story about lost innocence and historical guilt. This unmissable novel penetrates the heart of a nation's darkness, encountering a suppressed history of greed, envy, revenge and exploitation, and holding a mirror up to the true nature of America today.

Compulsively readable, masterly - a tour de force

Riveting from the very first page, I was completely addicted... A literary thriller and a timely, unsparing excavation of the very real spectre of race in America's past and present. White Tears is proof that Kunzru is one of the finest novelists of his generation...

Hari Kunzru is an incredibly versatile writer who is alert to the inequalities in the world... Powerful and complex, White Tears is a novel about abuses of wealth and power. Brilliantly orchestrated, unforgettable and devastating

Hari Kunzru is one of our most important novelists

Kunzru's engagingly wired prose and agile plotting sweep all before them

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

A novel offering more hope

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

Masterly