[Sigrid Undset] should be the next Elena Ferrante . . . If HBO is looking for its next miniseries, it should give Kristin Lavransdatter the proper adaptation it deserves. This trilogy includes illicit sex, affairs, a church fire, an attempted rape, ocean voyages, rebellious virgins cooped up in a convent, predatory priests, an attempted human sacrifice, floods, fights, murders, violent suicide, a gay king, drunken revelry, the Bubonic Plague, deathbed confessions, and sex that makes its heroine ache 'with astonishment - that this was the iniquity that all the songs were about'

Tiina Nunnally's magnificent version revitalised Undset's epic in English: each page glows and sparkles like the landscapes she so wonderfully evokes

[My favourite fictional hero or heroine is] probably Sigrid Undset's strong-willed, sensual, self-destructive and ultimately rock-solid Kristin Lavransdatter. . . . Right away one somehow identifies with this daughter of medieval Norway; soon one compassionates her in her sufferings. . . . Like Murasaki and Dos Passos, Undset tells the story of a whole life

At certain points, Kristin Lavransdatter felt more real than the life I was living

The Nunnally translation is excellent - straightforward but also evocative, lyrical enough in places, but not, like earlier translations, overly romantic or archaic.... Every detail of Kristin Lavransdatter is significant, because the author knows what every detail means and how they all fit together. This makes the novel a rich and satisfying read

We consider it the best book our judges have ever selected and it has been better received by our subscribers than any other book

The finest historical novel our 20th century has yet produced; indeed it dwarfs most of the fiction of any kind that Europe has produced in the last twenty years

As a novel it must be ranked with the greatest the world knows today

Sigrid Undset's trilogy embodies more of life, seen understandingly and seriously . . . than any novel since Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov

The first great story founded upon the normal events of a normal woman's existence. It is as great and as rich, as simple and as profound, as such a story should be

No other novelist, past or present, has bodied forth the medieval world with such richness and fullness of indisputable genius. . . . One of the finest minds in European literature

A master . . . writing in a prose as vigorous, articulate and naturalistic as the novel it re-creates, Tiina Nunnally brilliantly captures a world both remote and strangely familiar

Frank, funny and unputdownable, Isabel Kaplan's NSFW takes you on an ambitious young woman's wild ride through Hollywood. Her mother's a famous feminist lawyer, and she's a rising executive star, mistress of her destiny. But behind the glitter and the justice, everyone is tarnished and compromised - including even our narrator. Kaplan, with her sharp and nuanced eye, sees it all, and tells it brilliantly.

A frank account of the inherent filthiness of leaning in. A study of the psychological, and at times literal, gymnastics that are required of striving women.

I read this steely investigation of workplace ambition and patriarchal complicity in one sitting, my alliances shifting with every page. Funny, insightful, and enraging in all the best ways, NSFW is a fiercely smart debut that turns its gaze back on the reader, forcing you to ask just how far you'd go - and who you'd throw under the bus - for a seat at the table.

A stunning portrayal of intergenerational family love and the complications of the human condition. I was swept up in the world of the Aylward women: in their power and pain and mostly, in their fierce resilience. A novel full of compassion and honesty, where love triumphs. The prose is pitch perfect.

Hymn to the warp and woof of life; celebration of the flip-flop way of family; soaring testimony to the endurance of the human spirit. And all delivered with his trademark compassion, empathy, humour and brio. A gift of a book.

A compelling read

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this is a gorgeous, life-enhancing novel.

Ryan's writing is like poetry and he has a real gift for creating characters who live in full technicolour. Highly recommend

In Ryan's hands the mundane and the everyday is transformed into a thing of beauty, thrumming with significance.

Tender with comic observation ... a topsy-turvy emotional rollercoaster

Magical

Exquisitely rendered. It reads like musical sounds, full of light and lilting melody...it's funny and sad, and sparks with the most tremendous, tart, wit.

The characters are compelling and vividly drawn, the dialogue is profane and frequently hilarious; the prose drips like honey off a spoon.

A jewel of a novel that will surely become a classic... enthralling and unmissable

A celebration of love and loyalty among women.

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this a gorgeous, life-enhancing read

It is a beaut. It's a celebration of women and of womanhood. I see my mother in this, I see my sister ... This book is a joy.

If language - lyric, lovely and funny, steeped in County Tipperary - and women (men come and go, rarely center a chapter and are often useless, sometimes cruel) are of no interest to you, The Queen of Dirt Island is not your next read. Ryan's book is a celebration, in an embroidered, unrestrained, joyful, aphoristic and sometimes profane style, of both ... The Queen of Dirt Island gives the women their due, and the reader is rewarded.

Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island is a little Irish miracle ... there's as much implicit wisdom in these pages about how to live as how to write ... Ryan has his own emotional range and a way of capturing the largeness of what look like tiny lives but aren't

Ambitious, unsettling and funny, this book is full of desire and mischief with surprising results.