Yates is such a magnificent writer

Bittersweet, elegiac, this is Richard Yates's gentlest book

A first-class work of imagination

In an age embarrassed by story-telling... Yates tell stories we believe

Elegant... Authentic... One of the significant accomplishments of Afterwards is a coiling suspense driven more by psychology than circumstance

[Afterwards] is about invisible borders, the hard-held Irish border, the border between lovers, between generations, between past and present. It is a fine and profound work

Seiffert returns to many of the themes of her first novel, The Dark Room: guilt, grief, memory and forgetting. But Afterwards also asks the questions about how much people can really know about the people they love

Superb...the drama is balanced and the tension sustained...masterful

Readers who wonder why... Martin Amis and... Kiran Desai seem to flinch from writing about their own times should study Ms Seiffert

Rachel Seiffert is the poet and spokeswoman of those who find themselves on the wrong side of history...powerful, almost unbearably intense and wonderfully written

A quietly ambitious book

Despite the halting, low-key narration as Joe and Alice attempt to piece together the terms of their engagement, a simmering tension builds, though Seiffert is admirably less concerned with the revelation of atrocities than in how the soldier, having breached the first commandment, negotiates a return to ordinary life

A beautiful book and it's beautifully written

My favourite book of all time

Morrison's stunning trilogy is an evocation of black life over the past four centuries. It defies summary. Completed almost 25 years ago, these novels top anything produced by any American writer including Hemingway, Updike and DeLillo

[A] beautiful, haunting novel

More than one of Morrison's books could be classed as masterpieces, but this one is famous for a reason: everyone should read it

A magnificent achievement...an American masterpiece

A triumph

She melds horror and beauty in a story that will disturb the mind forever

Toni Morrison is not just an important contemporary novelist but a major figure in our national literature

A work of genuine force. . .Beautifully written

There is something great in Beloved: a play of human voices, consciously exalted, perversely stressed, yet holding true. It gets you

Superb. . .A profound and shattering story that carries the weight of history. . .Exquisitely told

This is a wonderful novel about slavery, freedom, parental loss and revenants