A sly masterly novel

Full of delicious satire, Grimshaw is much lauded in New Zealand and should have entered the British consciousness long ago.

The unsettling juxtaposition of urbanity and blood-letting that characterises Grimshaw's other fiction keeps things edgy and jumpy here

Grimshaw cleverly depicts a series of power struggles as her characters seek to manipulate each other, forcing the reader to question their motives.

Opening the pages of Charlotte Grimshaw’s new novel Soon is akin to tilting the blinds in a dim room; the razor-like precision of her words flood your mind with crisp, searing light, such is the vivid clarity of her prose... It’s a wonderful novel which explores morality and the extent to which we are responsible for our own actions.

Smart political thriller… Spiked with satire… Sophisticated

Hard not to finish in one go, Yoko Ogawa's stories are perfect for spooky bedtime reading - and not-so-sweet dreams

Polished, original and strange. She reveals humour, menace, and humanity in a quietly explosive book

Her combination of the strange with the visceral elegantly conveys silent inner worlds of misery and pain

Ogawa is original, elegant, very disturbing. I admire any writer who dares to work on this uneasy territory - we're on the edge of the unspeakable. The stories seem to penetrate right to the heart of the world, and find it a cold and eerie place. Her spare technique is very skilled. Every word is put to work. She sets up a small vibration, a disturbance, which begins quietly and generates wider and wider ripples of unease. There are no narrative tricks, but the stories generate a surprising amount of tension. You feel as if you've touched an icy hand

Ogawa's tales possess a gnawing, erotic edge

Yoko Ogawa is able to give expression to the most subtle workings of human psychology in prose that is gentle yet penetrating.

Each well narrated and haunting novella, about love, obsession and dark humour, has an unpredictable twist of viciousness coupled with compassion