Britain's Marcel Proust

Underpinning it is an exquisite balance of pain and beauty - an aspect of the sublime - as Welch brings to vivid life the existence lost to him for ever ... he is surprising us still

The writer who most directly influenced my work ... he makes the reader aware of the magic that is right under his eyes

A heightened, sensual journey ... it is Orvil's vibrant energy that allows this book to bubble ... beautifully odd ... spectacular

Unlike any other person I had come across, Welch seemed to be speaking particularly to me

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger

Tightly woven and immediate, The Paper Palace takes us deep into a vivid summer landscape, a family, and a private, longstanding love story, and holds us there from start to finish

I can't think of a more brilliant debut than The Paper Palace. Enticing, assured and multi-layered, it introduces a major new voice in American fiction . . . A marvel

Absolutely phenomenal novel - dazzling writing and utterly addictive. Read it

It felt as if I read The Paper Palace in one go. It was completely immersive, and shocking, and utterly alive. I loved it

The Paper Palace turned out to be the very page-turner I needed. If you want to learn something about love over a long time - how it can hurt, how it can soar - read this book

A family drama, a forbidden love story, a childhood tragedy, this is a stunning literary debut that will leave you reeling

A beautifully constructed, wonderfully intelligent and beguiling novel, rich with a multitude of pleasures

Miranda Cowley Heller has written a magnificent page-turner, a love story that shimmers with desire, intelligence, and humor. Lush and gorgeously written, The Paper Palace is as intoxicating as a summer night by the sea. I didn't want it to end

Set in the physical and psychic landscape of Cape Cod, The Paper Palace is a fever dream of a novel, luminous with love and shot through with humor and heartbreak. It is a book that explores the indelibility of childhood, what it means to be shaped by place, and all that is unpredictable about the human heart. I couldn't put it down

Beautifully written, richly compelling, The Paper Palace is as dark and uncompromising as it is tender and lyrical. Here is a love triangle that keeps you turning the pages, a vivid evocation of place, and an exploration of the one of the most unsettling of secrets

The writing is full of rich detail, evoking the New England landscape . . . this is an absorbing family saga packed with intrigue and complicated characters that transports you to Cape Cod. I can't wait for the adaptation

Mesmerising . . . A promising debut from a talent to watch

A deliciously lyrical novel . . . weaving between the dangerous yet excitable now and the years of ungodly traumas passed, this masterful tale of childhood love will wash over you like the refreshing, cold waters of The Paper Palace's nearby lake

[Cowley Heller] brings to fiction an understanding of how to layer storylines, as well as an assured feel for dialogue and visual description . . . a skilful portrait

The Paper Palace paints a vivid picture of family secrets and tensions, against the backdrop of a sun-soaked summer

Miranda Cowley Heller's debut The Paper Palace . . . finds Elle on the point of leaving her near-perfect family life for the visceral thrill of Jonas, green-eyed soul mate of her youthful vacations. With its atmospheric setting and rich backstory, the denouement is set to be an August talking point and a mini-series is already slated.'

A stirring and sensual story

This accomplished family saga is gripping and poetic, capturing the complexity of the human heart

A richly detailed family saga that nods to tales by Johns Cheever and Updike . . . this immersive novel makes for a lushly satisfying read

The novel unfolds like a set of dark short stories, with a different character narrating or guiding each one. But there's a twist: Luckenbooth is not just haunted by the realities of time and history, but also by the strong musk of the gothic imagination ... Thickly worked and carefully assembled, the novel functions as a claustrophobic chiller and as a testament to lives led beyond the margins and in the shadows.

Luckenbooth ... is littered with lines like this. The sort of lines that demand to be read and reread: splendid in isolation, electric in combination. Fagan writes with drama. She can pick out the fine detail, in neat brush strokes, no doubt, but it is in drawing her arm back and attacking a story with great, sweeping lyricism that she propels Luckenbooth forward, dragging the reader through the 20th century, as experienced by a compelling cast of characters.

Slips and slides through layers of history, tears in the fabric of time and a series of strange shape shifting characters - it's a wonderful work that is a trip into a spectral interzone but also staged in a warped reality - great writing and a major talent.

A novel for readers with sophisticated tastes.

Uniquely gripping visions of the hidden social, economic and spiritual forces at play in 20th-century Edinburgh.

Dazzlingly ambitious.

As sexy and horrifying as any fairy story, it is a book concerned, not only with a structure, but with structures: alphabetical, architectural, societal, what they are built upon and how they crumble

Prize-winning author Jenni Fagan does not disappoint with her latest novel, Luckenbooth, which is easily her most compelling yet. In her usual poetic style, Fagan tells of a nine-storey Edinburgh tenement just off the Royal Mile that is creaking with secrets. Throughout this haunting novel, characters' secrets and memories live on in the howling gales of the spirit world, desperate to re-enter their lives. The narrative takes us through eight decades - from 1910 to 1999 - working its way up all nine floors of the building in hopscotch fashion, allowing for an intriguing interpretation of 20th-century life in the capital. Prepare to be transported into a Fagan's weird and wonderful imagination. It is a whirlwind read and one that I could not put down until the final page had turned.

As sexy and horrifying as any fairy story, it is a book concerned, not only with a structure, but with structures: alphabetical, architectural, societal, what they are built upon and how they crumble.

An Edinburgh tenement building is haunted by tall stories and unnerving strangers, from William Burroughs to the devil's daughter, in this weird and wonderful gothic confection.

Her "world building" is highly effective, and each character fully inhabits their decade. Fagan's writing is anchored in societal issues, the wrongs done and the ways individuals have challenged those wrongs and asserted their individuality and sexuality in ways that might make them seem misfits, outcasts. Fagan certainly pulls no punches and is determined that these passionate, authentic stories should not be confined to the periphery.

A deliciously weird gothic horror

An ambitious and ravishing novel that will haunt me long after

Ambitious in scope… The physical atmosphere of the Bass Rock and its surroundings are wonderfully evoked… But it is the relationships between women in this tessellated work that triumph... I wholly recommend this book.

Wyld is often praised for her lyrical prose, and The Bass Rock is most certainly a continuation of this form.

[A] dark, beautiful and funny gothic family saga for the #MeToo generation… an atmospheric book that transports you within a few sentences… The tension is always building as the story takes on an otherworldly dimension.

The Bass Rock is complex, rich, challenging… Like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, The Bass Rock offers a universal history of subjugation and oppression… Violence…runs through the book like veins in marble… Vivid and gripping.

A gripping look at three women's stories across four centuries.

Evie Wyld’s passion for horror shines through in the setting of this novel.

Utterly enthralling… [Wyld’s] eye for human foibles and idiosyncrasy is incredibly sharp, and this novel once again exhibits her bravura way with narrative structure… Dark, disturbing and very sophisticated.

[An] intensely absorbing gothic novel, which weaves together the fate of three women across three centuries. That it can also comfortably accommodate episodes of off-the-wall, Fleabag-esque hilarity confirms the acclaimed Wyld's brilliance.

Wyld's thought-provoking plots separate this book from many others on the shelves... Wyld's three narratives are artfully crafted to suit the shifting time frames.

Wyld's ingeniously linked narratives weave a haunting tale of fear and defiance.

A novel of such subtlety and hope