One of the great English novels of recent years, a work of sublime literary realism, and a blackly comic meditation on the sins and sorrows of modernity

Wonderfully dark

A terrific debut, written in a present tense which flashes every so often into the past - a trick which Szalay pulls off with confidence... a tense and compelling read

A funny, painful, graphic demonstration that our job is a crucial part of our identity.... It's compulsively readable

Szalay's satire is sharp, though his depictions of rush-hour raise the blood pressure to levels that are not advisable

This is David Szalay's first novel, and it's very, very good...it has a whiff of The Office...Superb

It's very, very good

I do think the world would probably be a better place if everyone read Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant, but to be honest, anything by Tyler will do. She's such a brilliantly empathetic writer - there's no 'them' and 'us' in Tyler's world - and she often writes from the perspective of the kind of people who you would walk past and barely notice in the street . . . Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant is a proper family saga filled with beady but compassionate takes on all of the unforgettable characters. Reading Tyler helps people to become better people, and I really fully believe that

Excellently done; the minutiae of domestic landscapes, the lunatic irrationality of family quarrels, the torments of sibling rivalry

Funny, heart-hammering, wise...superb entertainment

A terrific writer... She's changed my perception on life

A classic of contemporary Americana... variously funny and horrifying and finally, quietly, terribly moving

A book that should join those few that every literate person will have to read

A novelist who knows what a proper story is . . . [Tyler is] not only a good and artful writer, but a wise one as well

In her ninth novel she has arrived at a new level of power

Her fiction has strength of vision, originality, freshness, unconquerable humor. This new novel delighted me - perhaps her best so far.

Eudora Welty proclaimed: 'If I could have written the last sentence of Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant I'd have been happy the rest of my life'

The charm of an Anne Tyler novel lies in the clarity of her prose and the wisdom of her observations, in her fine ear for the 'clamor' of family.

A brilliant novel

Rachel Kushner writes dazzling, sexy, glorious prose. She is as brilliant on men and motorcycles as she is on art and film. The Flamethrowers is an ambitious and powerful novel.

A high-wire performance worthy of Philippe Petit... Hang on: this is a trip you don’t want to miss

Wow! What a book! I'm eager for everyone I know to read it. It's an example of the very best in contemporary fiction…a contemporary masterpiece, and it wants you all to read it

A dazzlingly exciting novel... This is a deeply intelligent and engaging novel that uses all the virtues of old-fashioned storytelling to celebrate the triumphs and absurdities of new-fangled art

The Flamethrowers has gained praise from Jonathan Franzen and drawn comparisons with Patti Smith's Just Kids as it epically leaps between the New York art scene of the late 1970s and Italy in the midst of revolution... An essential summer read

Exhilirating, psychologically complex, and perfectly intense, this is a thrilling contemporary novel likely to become a cultural touchstone

A brilliant lightning bolt of a novel

In this extremely bold, swashbuckling novel, romantic and disillusioned at once, intellectually daring and even subversive, Rachel Kushner has created the most beguiling American ingénue abroad, well, maybe ever: Daisy Miller as a sharply observant yet vulnerable Reno-raised motorcycle racer and aspiring artist, set loose in gritty 70s New York and the Italy of the Red Brigades

Riveting

Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers is remarkable for its expansiveness and for its exhilarating succession of ideas

National Book Award finalist Rachel Kushner brings NYC's art scene to life so well in The Flamethrowers you could get high off the paint

Fast-paced, sexy and smart

Electric...addictive...smart and satisfying

Captivating and compelling

This is a work of ferocious energy and imaginative verve, straining at the seams with ideas, riffs, jokes, set-pieces, belly-laughs, horror and heartbreak

Kushner writes with authority, passion and humour, her characters richly drawn and her story packed with delicious anecdotes and side lines from a wide array of memorable characters

Sexy and brilliant

Incandescent

Kushner's second novel comes loaded with recommendations and it's easy to see why…highly unusual and written with great seriousness and potency

It manages to relate the art scene in 1970s New York to the Red Brigades in Italy, with lots of motorbikes thrown in

Kushner’s writing is a kind of marvel

This novel has undeniable force and power… it’s beautifully written

You can feel the wind whipping through your hair, your pulse racing, as Kushner’s daring heroine, Reno, motorcycles across salt flats and down city streets, on the prowl for art, for love, for a cause

Kushner’s take on 1970s radicalism, art and politics is a big, absorbing read

A self-consciously cool mash-up of motorbikes, art and unpleasant Italian politics

In fiction I enjoyed Rachel Kushner's The Flamethrowers for its style and its daring

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner manages to connect the art scene in New York in the 1970s with the Red Brigades in Italy, through the medium of motorcycles and drag car racing. Ambitious and beautifully written, it is one of the more surprising books I have read this year

Introducing a fresh new voice

A left-field and potentially ludicrous literary concept – a multigenerational transcontinental historical epic built around a speed-freak biker heroine – is executed with élan by American novelist Rachel Kushner … Genius

The novel, Kushner’s second, deploys mordant observations and chiseled sentences to explore how individuals are swept along by implacable social forces

A Bildungsroman set against the violence of the 20th century, The Flamethrowers is less a litmus test for misogyny than a standard for the recent historical novel

It should've won the National Book Award... It is second to none

Some of the prose is as thrilling as riding a motorbike on a mountain road with no lights

Has the kind of poise, wariness and moral graininess that puts you in mind of weary-souled visionaries like Robert Stone or Joan Didion

For a while last spring it seemed like every single person I knew in New York was reading The Flamethrowers, which is normally enough to put me off a book, but in this case I did read it and found that its ubiquity was more than justified. Then in September I happened to visit the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, where one of its most memorable set-pieces takes place, and I wanted to read it all over again. If I say it captures a young woman's experience of the downtown art world in the 1970s, I'm going to make it sound boring, but in fact it's superbly enjoyable

Much of what makes this book so magnificent is Kushner's astonishing observational powers; she seems to work with a muse and a nail gun, so surprisingly yet forcefully do her sentences pin reality to the page. I was pinned there too –– BEST BOOK OF 2013

A terrific, gripping, poetic book... Kushner's meandering plot and pacy pose has completely won me over

Kushner’s prose dazzles with invention