A striking and impressive work...one of the most original novels of the year

Simply one of the finest books about the pains and joys of family that I have ever read. The life of the Jones family glows like a barley-sugar window

A brilliantly written first novel... Spirit of time and place is lovingly remembered, steeped in nostalgia yet never sentimental... This is a novelist at work, glorifying in the old-fashioned virtues of plot and character...rendered in graceful prose that is beguiling and charming

Full of enjoyably acute social observation, August offers an absorbing account of a now vanished era of English life... Beguiling

Gerard Woodward's first novel is founded on the brilliantly simple premise of portraying a family and its inexorable implosion through a succession of August camping holidays... A strong narrative, powered by cunningly withheld information and the threat of crisis

He has not written a better or more skilful farce

Britain's leading practitioner of black humour

The year's most impressive debut

Like Donna Tartt’s "The Secret History" or a good film noir . . . Jane’s low-key narration has just the right tone to keep readers hooked

The strength of 'The Lake of Dead Languages' is a silken prose that lures the reader into Goodman’s . . . story of murder, suicide . . . revenge, and madness

Part suspense, part coming-of-age, and all-enthralling . . . A book that needs the roar of a fire to ward off its psychic chill