Direct, evocative, erotic and tinged with sadness. What more should poetry be?

De Bernieres captures with quiet assurance that Cavafy music of resigned, sensual sadness as lovers depart, gods retreat and dynasties collapse

Delightful

Love dominates ... we are told the truth about love – even when it is awkward or lacking ... the rum enthusiasm fuelling this collection endears it to the reader

Today the culture of Greece may be facing a new crisis, but many will welcome de Bernières’s revisiting of the “miracle period"

Deeply moving and thought-provoking, this is by no means a comforting read: Cooper takes bold risks with both her characters and her narrative, and a sense of the unquiet ghosts of the past haunts this book's pages. A superb book, which deserves to become a future classic.

A breakout book

If you enjoy the introspective aspects of Virginia Woolf or the American modernity of Jennifer Egan, you’ll love this sweeping, tragicomic novel of ideas

One of those generation-defining America novels that tackles big historical issues

Full of wit

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level

Meg Wolitzer’s latest offering promises to be the epic novel of the summer

A wonderful novel, written with warmth and depth of emotion

This is an exhilarating, aerobatic, addictive novel

Meg Wolitzer’s best novel yet

The dreamy, criss-crossing narrative proves Wolitzer one of America’s most ingenious and important writers

An engrossing look at life’s twists and turns

The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer’s writing are extraordinary and The Interestings brings her achievement, already so steadfast and remarkable, to an even higher level.

This is a wonderful book. Intelligent and subtle, it is exquisitely written with enormous warmth and depth of emotion… Wolitzer is an affectionate and clear-sighted observer of human nature

Meg Wolitzer proves brilliant at writing normal, unremarkable lives, investing them with just as much detailed attention and humane humour as the lives of the beautiful, the rich and the famous… [She] also pulls off an impressive balancing act, sometimes inhabiting the moment-to-moment present of her characters, and at others times writing with a droll hindsight

There are certain authors whose new book you look forward to as though you were about to catch up on news from an old friend. And there are authors whose new book you fall on greedily because you know it will be tartly delicious and satisfy a hunger you didn’t know you had till you read them for the first time. For me, Meg Wolitzer has long been in both of those categories… The Interestings is full of Wolitzer’s trademark pleasures. I love her fearlessness in tackling everything … She has a sly wit and verbal brio which can even make clinical depression entertaining