[A] poignant and playful meditation on loss, love and loneliness. How To Be Human vibrates with originality, poetry and guts and I loved every strange, yet beautiful, page

How to Be Human is an intriguing and subversive debut, an eerie tale that acts on the reader like a ghost story, charged with the power of the ignored and the suppressed. If we disdain our animal selves, they trail us, shadowing us at dawn and dusk. Paula Cocozza shows us that the line between the wilderness and the city is thin, easily transgressed; the ghost breathing in the thicket is our own wild nature.

There is much of [Ali] Smith’s playfulness in Paula Cocozza's enchanting debut . . . For all its suggestiveness and sensuality, [her] narrative is artfully restrained . . . In this startling debut, [she] seems to be saying that, no matter how lonely the city becomes, through an open window a mass of life is listening back.

[An] impressive debut

Cocozza has a wonderful eye for detail, and her descriptions of the natural world are uncanny . . . She takes a big risk in narrating some sections from the point of view of the fox, and pulls it off with aplomb.

Unsettling, the writing often vivid and rich.

Hypnotic . . . suspenseful . . . wonderfully sly and assured . . . Readers may come to realize they are on thrillingly unstable ground.

Intriguing and unsettling . . . the tricky, shifting substance of relationships is so insightfully drawn and constantly surprises.

A thrilling psychodrama . . . She brilliantly captures a sense of Hitchcockian, curtain-twitching intensity . . . Like the scent of a fox, truth and fact in How to Be Human start to evaporate. What is left behind is a pervasive sense that beneath the veneer of civility, something wilder is always lurking.

Sharp, thoughtful . . . exhilarating . . . the plot slips from urban pastoral to tense thriller.

Cocozza’s brilliant debut novel [is] a beguiling, highly inventive story about loneliness and finding a place in the world . . . A disturbing humour underpins Mary’s voice, a mesmerising mix of delusion and discernment . . . The momentum is achieved through Cocozza’s edgy, atmospheric writing.

Paula Cocozza's intense, fox-like powers of observation allow her to stalk the claims of territory and hidden wildness that energise this taut, shimmering novel.

Eerie, original and subversive, How to be Human is a fascinating yet disturbing look at obsession, delusion and loneliness . . A thrilling exploration of what makes us human.

A writer who is clearly unafraid of launching herself with a bang . . . Compelling . . . We are reminded of how close to the surface primal instincts can prowl.

Nicely balanced between the serious and the lighter-hearted, Cocozza’s novel is an engaging read.

In turn devastating, heart-warming and absurd, How to Be Human is an astonishing debut . . . At its core, it is a powerful and tender portrait of madness, loss and love.

Cocozza builds up equal measures of dread, danger and derangement as Mary brilliantly but bizarrely redefines what her future might look like.

A singular love story of dominance and betrayal, this novel sets the tone for what will hopefully be a long and strange literary career.

This brilliantly eerie novel is a powerful meditation on the blurred lines between sanity and delusion, the wild and so-called civilisation.

An atmospheric tale about safety, sanity and the complexity of relationships.

This dream-like debut from Cocozza paints a cleverly observed picture of wildness and loneliness, blurring the lines between human nature, normality and delusion.

Terrific, sharply observed… Segal gets the precarious mother-teenage daughter relationship spot on

Segal’s is a clever, cruel, redemptive, psychologically acute novel that made this reader glad to have been at school just too early for Facebook, selfies and an “online community” baying for news of your latest boyfriend

Thoughtful and beautifully observed

A gripping foray into second families

Thanks to its occasional moments of emotional veracity, The Awkward Age will be praised as a worthy successor to Segal’s debut

Francesca Segal is an accomplished writer. She neatly describes the clash of cultures between the academically rigorous education enjoyed by Nathan and Gwen’s freer, no-holds-barred comprehensive school. There is an engaging and colourful cast of characters… Segal vividly conveys the difficulties faced by imperfectly blended families

This is a warm, funny book dealing with a most modern matter

A brilliant, thoroughly modern family drama from the author of The Innocents

Punchy… Segal tackles her subject with humour and intelligence and a wealth of memorable characters

Exuberant and entertaining… The rest of the narrative then considers how the competing needs and duties of its four main characters can be met, handled and resolved. It does so with brio, insight and empathy, and with carefully modulated comic energy

A compelling story on the complexities that come with a very modern family that we just couldn’t put down

Love, loss, new beginnings and saying goodbye, it's all in here. A moving read

A terrific novel.

[Segal's] descriptions are spare and unerring; everyday family interactions are observed warmly and yet with precision

Evans' writing is like water; her sentences ebb and flow and change course, mirroring the Thames as it wends its way in and around the characters' lives

A masterpiece of modern living

An amazing book full of wisdom and empathy

An immersive look into friendship, parenthood, sex, and grief - as well as the fragility of love. It is told with such detail, you're left wanting more

Beautifully written and observed

Evans is extraordinarily good on the minutiae of grief, family, and the fragility of love

a lyrical portrait of modern London