Burnside can describe the material world with astonishing deftness… but here, as so often in his writing, the observable facts undergo a series of transformations: into a meditation on separateness, from this to the end of a relationship, and then on to the nature of our eat-or-be-eaten world… Musical and memorable, this is echt Burnside. He is the poet who more than any other writing today sees the material world and the world of thought and ideas as two sides of the most fragile of membranes. Few could make the colour blue such a sensuous symbol of slippages of atmosphere or mood… Still Life teems with the variety of the world… If you have hitherto admired John Burnside in only one genre, now is the time to take the smallest of sideways steps and read both.

In John Burnside’s latest collection of poetry Still Life with Feeding Snake… nothing stays still for very long and every image wrought onto the page is alight with life and movement… His signature style and themes are present in his latest work Still Life with Feeding Snake, along with a dose of humour… Burnside blends words the way a baker kneads dough – he rolls them up, scrunches them together, stretches a string of them to breaking point then folds them into each other to create something else entirely, all the while never moving from that same meditative spot where a little flour has been sprinkled across the table… A soulful and meditative collection, Still Life with Feeding Snake is already a 2017 literary highlight.

As a poet, Burnside has peripheral vision: he is always glimpsing other worlds out of the corner of his eye… The joy of his poems – and part of what makes them moving – is that he does know and never stops registering the ways in which beauty makes life worth living.

These poems haul you back to the time when you first realized how alone you were (and are), all the time wondering what to become and how. Burnside’s genius is to makes some sense of this pain, for himself and for the reader. This is poetry acting as a scalpel, cutting the heart in order to heal.

The world is such a mess. These poems concentrate on stillness, on time that isn’t haste. They deliver a zen remedy of calm alert.

An uplifting read, full of warmth and wonderful characters; four-legged and human!

Anyone dreaming of escaping to a rural life is going to love this. Pups, paw prints and piglets! A purr-fect curl-up read for country lovers!

The Cauliflower brims with rich delicacies of arcana and ephemera ... [Barker] has created a zany, frustrating, brilliant work that, despite flaunting its historicity, does more to prove Barker's rich talent for invention.

A deeply researched piece whose fascinated impetuosity and esoteric mode of address still transmit a vast quantity of information about the guru and his life . . . watching Barker’s garrulous, profound, silly and bitingly intelligent mind at play is one of the greatest and most contagious delights in modern British fiction.

It’s another terrific novel from Nicola Barker. As an experiment in structure and form it’s fascinating, but as an exploration of the life of someone we could never hope to understand, it’s absolutely essential.

Comic and elaborate … A vivid panorama … The increasing pleasures to be found in The Cauliflower® arise not so much from espying the seams along which the novel’s texture is assembled as from the variously authoritative voices that tell this story from many competing perspectives.

A life story in all its mystical, magical human extremes . . . a mixture of irreverence and fascination, awe and appreciation, scepticism and wonderment, and it is so energetic that the pages fly . . . In The Cauliflower®, the most daring piece of storytelling to appear in English this year, faith is fact, imagination is knowledge.

The Cauliflower is an unconventional telling of a weird and wonderful story.

Barker's writing is completely original and insightful and bursting full of spirituality. The novel is thoroughly enjoyable.

[A] bold and fascinating work.

A marvel of enlightened entertainment.

Bizarre but very readable; this novel is recommended.

Barker’s writing is completely original and insightful.

It worked beautifully for me.

Impertinent, irreverent and very funny.

A series of elegant meditations.

Moving and often genuinely tense—as well as richly informative.

[It is] full of playful wit and understatement… A very short book but it contains more to enjoy and chew over than most novels three times its length.

But The Noise of Time shares with Leo Tolstoy’s The Kreutzer Sonata - another text which has at its centre the tyranny of music and its physiologically devastating potential – the capacity for evocation of music-making that is worthy of the real thing.

A brilliant portrait of an artist trying not to sign away his soul.

At his thought-provoking best… A story about the collision of Art and Power, about human compromise, human cowardice and human courage. It is the work of a master.

[The Noise of Time is] disturbing, darkly comical and an ideal intellectual palate-cleanser to kick off the new year.

[A] densely written, masterfully told tale.

A new, short, highly concentrated novel…meditating in brief paragraphs on the art and compromise with power over 50 years in the life of the composer Shostakovich.

Moving and often genuinely tense.

A brilliant reflection of one man’s consciousness, amid the fear and terror of authoritarian rule. Completely gripping and informative and entertaining, it is a classic Barnes concoction.

Pulsing with riffs on love, music and honesty both personal and artistic, it depicts a man who knows he’s a coward, even if his scores are courageous… Barnes also captures the farcical side of life in Soviet Russia.

A tour de force by a master novelist at the top of his game.

Barnes’s prose is thoughtful and elegant.

A great novel.

Barnes pulls together all the strands of an artlessly diffuse and meticulously imagined portrait of life under tyranny. It is masterfully done.

A distinctive and, as always with Barnes, highly readable marriage of suave execution and chilly, grown-up subject matter.

With its three-act structure, dramatic tension, lyrical passages and recurring motifs, the novel has an operatic quality. Offering an intimate portrait of the artist and an overview of Russia’s troubled past, it’s a compelling read.

You’ll love this.

The Noise of Time is a brilliant impersonation, both as a novel and as a portrayal of the “real” historical Shostakovich.

A gripping story, a fascinating portrait of a period of history, and a brilliantly in-depth character study… Beautifully written… Philosophically and intellectually enriching.

A thoughtful, moving read about integrity, compromise and courage.

Barnes has some striking setpieces in this probing, intellectually robust novel.

The fear, danger and paranoia felt in those times rise memorably from the pages.

Barnes stands out, so vivid are his images and so poignant his insights. His works stand among the classics of the postmodern era, and for good reason.

A marvellous meditation on the Cold War era and particularly the battles of conscience that besiege a man living under tyranny.

The tone is intimate and aphoristic, the paragraphs succinct.

A fascinating account of the life of Dimitri Shostakovich… Perceptive, symbolic… The Noise of Time is an essential read, and not only for musicians.

A finely-tuned masterpiece... Barnes' prose is supreme.

An intimate portrait of a public intellectual living in a totalitarian atmosphere… Immersive… The Noise of Time presents a compelling story in engaging and original prose.

Kaleidoscopic portrait… Barnes deftly constructs a life history... A masterfully told story of survival. *****

Beautifully composed.

Without a doubt, Barnes has succeeded the high expectations of the people who waited with bated breath for the release of The Noise of Time. In a work that feels both original and authentic, he encourages us to consider the importance of art, in whatever form, and the influence it can have on us all.

Barnes at his best...a poignant fictional recreation of the artistic agonies of the composer Shostakovich.

A very sensitive account of how art can be in conflict with naked political power.

A book I’d like to tuck myself away for a day to read. It’s short in length but by all accounts big on ideas and power.

His Dmitri Shostakovich is completely believable.

[A] brilliant study of the relationship between art and an oppressive regime… A compelling depiction of the country’s history and a richly imagined close-up of the artist.

A poignant and thoughtful portrait of the persecuted artist.

[It is] elegant.

Another Brilliant reinvention by Barnes.

My favourite book of this year is The Noise of Time.

His best for ages. It is gripping, outward-looking, generous with plot and atmosphere and far beyond the powers of McEwan, Amis, Ishiguro, Rushidie et al…. This book grabbed me by the nuts like nothing of his since Starting at the Sun.

[A] haunting novel on the agonies of Shostakovitch under Stalin and his successors… I recommended it to a friend who for years was one of the great reviewers at the Washington Post. His reply: “It’s an extraordinary book. It’s a book that makes me wish I were reviewing again.”

A mini-masterpiece.

An elegant portrait of Shostakovitch.

Written with Barnes’ characteristic low-key elegance, the book becomes a meditation on artistic integrity and its limits in a brutal regime

An impressive narrative of personal integrity.

As a portrait of the composer and his time this book is a complete success… The Noise of Time is also convincing in the details… A book in which a certain grim humour is never too far away.

[A] gem of a novel.

A compelling read that combines sharp insights, lyrical passages and dramatic tension.

Black humour and retrospective anguish prevail in Julian Barnes’s latest novel.

A beautifully told story, this is subtle and powerful.

This small novel is an elegant and unflinching account of a life lived under extreme pressure, during Stalin’s Great Terror. Julian Barnes fleshes out the life of the composer Shostakovich whose life is under threat. A powerful story, well-crafted and beautifully written about the humanity and torments of a creative soul… An informative, thought provoking read.

An immense emotional and intellectual punch.