Wood is one of the finest critics at work today, heir to Coleridge, Hazlitt and V. S. Pritchett...He combines the breadth and seriousness of Edmund Wilson with the pellucid prose style of Cyril Connolly...Wood pursues his craft with a high seriousness the like of which we had not thought to see again after the death of Lionel Trilling

Breathtakingly good... James Wood is pretty much as good a general critic of literary fiction as you'll find writing in English at the moment

A stylish writer as well as a clear-sighted reader. His prose bristles with the sort of epigrammatic brilliance that asks challenging questions even when providing answers

The most urgent and morally demanding critic around is the brilliant James Wood... A second powerful collection

This is a collection to be read by anyone who wouldn't normally dream of reading literary criticism

It is [Wood's] secure observation that makes these essays so engaging and ultimately puts this corrective missionary critic on the side of the secular angels

In a literary world which is so often either relaxed into the flabby indifference of review-speak, or corseted into position with the strings and eyelets of critical jargon, James Wood's tone is invaluable

He is one of literature's true lovers, and his deeply felt, contentious essays are thrilling in their reach and moral seriousness

James Wood is an authentic literary critic, very rare in this bad time. One can dissent gently from his judgements but he is always urgent, lucid, and interesting

His default setting as a writer lies in documenting a muted alienation - Kafka with an iPod - and solace, in his books, tends to be found in the sudden human connection of sex and longing, but mostly his characters, like his readers, are left to figure things out on their own with shifting and partial information to go on

1Q84 is an extraordinary feat of sustained imagination

[One of] .. the best books to really get your teeth into this winter... Part thriller, part love story, the first print run sold out in one day in the author's native Japan

A whole host of Murakami icons from talking cats to one-way portals all contribute to this rich and often perplexing mix. But ultimately, 1Q84 is a simple love story that ends on a metaphysical cliff-hanger... a delicious paranormal stew

It is natural that his work should enchant younger readers, to whom the problems of being are still fresh, as well as others who never grew out of such puzzlements - that his books should send an outstretched hand of sympathy to anyone who feels that they too have been tossed, without their permission, into a labyrinth

An extraordinary love story. Murakami is renowned for his exceptional imagination and this book does not disappoint; he weaves a myriad of worlds, beliefs and themes together in a moving combination. Compelling and bewildering, there's nonetheless something profoundly human and stark in simplicity at the heart of this love story: the power of true love.

Fans, however, will recognise many elements in this fantastical tale, which at its twisted heart is another boy-meets-girl love story but which encompasses the ominous power of cults, a teasing preoccupation with quotidian mundanity, a sackload of music and literature references and a healthy dose of the downright bizarre.

1Q84 is certainly an engrossing, other-worldly mystery to lose yourself in, with a good deal of humour and a considerable thiller-esque page turning pull... Reading it is an intense and addictive experience, and this is no mean feat at all. However, it is also far more than that- it's a highly ambitious work, which raises more questions than it resolves in its intricate plot. A more optimistic take on George Orwell's 1984, kicking off in April that year just like the latter's dystopia, it is concerned with postmodern issues such as the rewriting of the past and the slippery dividing line between fact and fiction, exploring just how uncertain our grasp of reality can be, especially as the world we were born into morphs into somewhere quite different.... For all its fantasy surface and sexy details, this is a work of considerable and haunting complexity, which is likely to resonate a long time after one has stopped turning its numerous pages.

1Q84 is an awe-inspiring amalgamation of genres, stories and worlds and a novel imbued with the power of its own speculative nature

A funny, wryly observed coming-of-age novel, it will strike a chord with anyone who grew up during the Noughties. It’s full of quirky period details and Jim is an engaging narrator