The Nearest Thing to Life…[proves] that whether in short form or long, printed or spoken word, Wood is a voice worth listening to.

The Nearest Thing to Life is excellent: both insightful and sensible, a rare enough combination in criticism. Wood’s own noticings are as sharp as ever.

Brief but fascinating discourse.

[Has] an elegant lightness of touch… [A] slim, appealingly modest collection.

[A] short but lovely volume.

Autobiographical, open-handed and endlessly engaging.

Wood scrutinises devastatingly simple ideas. He does the work of the novelist in making his reader examine these concepts anew through gorgeously accomplished, apt language.

I can’t wait to read [it].

A hugely enjoyable journey though the riches of [Wood’s] extraordinarily well-stocked mind.

His [Wood’s] concept of literature is generous, inclusive and fundamentally democratic.

Few can match Welsh's verve for spinning a yarn, for putting you inside the minds of characters that are by turn grotesque, joyful, hilarious and – crucially – utterly compelling.

A Decent Ride, while his most comedic novel, is also his darkest.

More furious, filthy brilliance from Welsh.

Packed with filthy charm and characters old and new, it was a comic triumph with plenty of depth through its exploitation of celebrity culture and the treatment of sex workers.

Welsh carries realism to its limits and sometimes beyond… [He] Creates a world more real than a great many worlds we enter in today’s fiction.

A gripping read that fans of Dorothy Koomson will love

I laughed aloud at this funny, outrageous story of a girl from Wolverhampton council estate who reinvents herself as Dolly Wilde

as irreverent, amusing and vibrant as Moran herself

rowdy and fearless ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways

Ms. Moran['s] ... funny and cheerfully dirty coming-of-age novel has a hard kernel of class awareness ... sloppy, big-hearted and alive in all the right ways.

there’s so much real feeling too. Johanna’s vulnerability and bravado, as she moves out of her world and falls in love is beautifully done’ or ‘ and running through it all, with a visceral power that most writers should envy, is the shame and grinding anxiety of being poor

Moran also writes brilliantly about music, and especially about what music can do. She carries Johanna through this novel with incredible verve, extravagant candour, and a lot of heart. Johanna is … a wonderful heroine. A heroine who cares, who bravely sallies forth and makes things happen, who gives of herself, who is refreshingly unashamed. She’s so confident, it’s glorious

an entertaining read, with Moran in fine voice – hilarious, wild, imaginative and highly valuable…Moran is in danger of becoming to female masturbation what Keats was to Nightingales…

rude, big-hearted, wise-cracking novel…so filthy she’ll make you blush

This is going to be a bestseller…A sharp, hilarious and controversial read

Ali Smith is a master of language. Vigorous, vivid writing that is Ali Smith incarnate

Ingeniously conceived, gloriously inventive

Dizzyingly ambitious . . . endlessly artful, creating work that feels infinite in its scope and intimate at the same time. [A] swirling panoramic

Brilliant . . . the sort of death-defying storytelling acrobatics that don't seem entirely possible

Having read this now twice, in both directions so to speak, I've decided - and I do not write this flippantly - that Ali Smith is a genius

Approaches the world as only a novel can. The book moves not so much in a straight line as in a twisting helix pattern . . . delivers the heat of life and the return of beauty in the face of loss

A unique conversation between past and present

Wildly inventive . . . lyrical, fresh