Remarkable, beautifully written and fantastically entertaining… a compulsive read

[An] honest, powerful and moving memoir

[An] urgent, eloquently fearless book

[A] bold, brave memoir of [Fuller’s] emancipation from the past

Fuller doesn’t write misery memoirs. She writes warm, humorous and honest memoirs, and Leaving Before the Rains Come is another must-read

What sets [the book] apart is Fuller’s prose, as biting and beautiful as ever. It is often laugh-out-loud-funny too

A poetic and powerful account of a troubled marriage, sensitive, frank and full of insight into the human condition

[A] hauntingly beautiful memoir

Unquestionable is the lucid beauty of Fuller’s prose and her courage in producing it

A trenchant yet riveting examination of what [Alexandra Fuller] calls the “culture” of the end of a marriage

[Fuller] is so compassionate, funny and un-bitter, and her straight-shooting yet graceful prose is the real thing

This fascinating memoir is by turns hilarious and utterly heartbreaking in charting 20 years of marriage… Searingly and disconcertingly honest

Leaving Before the Rains Come is a drama of expatriation, exploring in searching terms…an imagined return of the native. It carries memoir beyond candour towards a place in literature

[A] readable, often hilarious, but always frank account

Fuller writes about making mistakes, living with grief and depression, coping with loss, with incredible insight and honesty. We raced through this book

A powerful, emotionally honest account of a relationship falling apart.

A riveting account of the disintegration of a marriage… Revelatory without ascribing blame. Fuller writes without bitterness or partiality, illuminating the universal by a powerful illustration of the particular.

An exquisitely written story...a brutally honest, absorbing and emotive read

Honest, intimate and ultimately unforgettable

Sympathetic, subtle and sometimes shocking

Plain and beautiful...Strout writes with an extraordinary tenderness and restraint

One of this year's best novels: an intense, beautiful book about a mother and a daughter, and the difficulty and ambivalence of family life

Elizabeth Strout's prose is like words doing jazz

Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge is the best novel I've read for some time

An exquisite novel of careful words and vibrating silences

In this quiet, well observed novel, a mother and her mysteriously ill daughter rebuild their relationship in a New York hospital room. Deft and tender, it lingers in the mind

A worthy follow-up to Olive Kitteridge

I loved My Name is Lucy Barton: she gets better with each book

The standout novel of the year - a visceral account of the relations between mother and daughter and the unreliability of memory

In a brilliant year for fiction, I've admired the nuanced restraint of Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton

Elizabeth Strout's My Name is Lucy Barton shouldn't work, but its frail texture was a triumph of tenderness, and sent me back to her excellent Olive Kitteridge

A rich account of a relationship between mother and daughter, the frailty of memory and the power of healing

This physically slight book packs an unexpected emotional punch

A novel offering more hope

My Name Is Lucy Barton intrigues and pierces with its evocative, skin-peeling back remembrances of growing up dirt-poor.

Masterly