Margaret Forster's...novel about mothers and daughters...is one of the most painfully honest I have ever read. It raised agonising questions about female identity, asking whether the role of mother leaves anything over for the individual woman, and whether daughters can ever shake off the past

A new work by Margaret Forster always gives me a tingle of anticipation. Her books are consistently good reads, packed with originality and imagination

Forster is remarkably honest, skilful and perceptive

An honest portrait of the generation gap and the perennial irritations that bedevil this most powerful and idealised of all blood ties

Gripping and full of interest...it confirms Némirovsky's brilliance as a storyteller with a deep understanding of the hidden flaws and cruelties in the human heart

The novella is a model of storytelling... What a hellish Arcadia Némirovsky conjures up, and with what refinement and subtlety

A gem-like novella, polished, multi-faceted and brilliant; a sweet pastoral that turns bracingly bitter; beautifully poised between innocence and experience, desire and death. I look forward to reading it again

Némirovsky's voice is not loud, flamboyant or morose. It is clear and steady. It is the steadiness, the slow burn that does the work

This slender volume packs in some hefty emotions...jealousy, bitterness, greed and of course, passion

Like Chekhov, she observes and powerfully expresses the detail that fixes the scene

Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility

Vintage Murakami [and] easily the most erotic of [his] novels

[A] treat...Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done

Murakami's most famous coming of age novel of love, loss and longing

Catches the absorption and giddy rush of adolescent love... It is also, for all the tragic momentum and the apparently kamikaze consciousness of many of its characters, often funny and quirkily observed.

[A] treat . . . Murakami captures the heartbeat of his generation and draws the reader in so completely you mourn when the story is done.

One of the most poignant and evocative novels I have ever read

Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates heartbreak and loss of faith

Quinn brings the period in question vividly to life: his research is exemplary, and his subject absorbing

All the ingredients of an upmarket page-turner

Ambitious, gripping and disturbingly well done

Beyond its splendid feel for the era’s chat and patter, the novel pits philanthropy and opportunism, ideals and selfishness, bracingly at odds

This novel is refreshingly different and contains a cornucopia of wonderful material and evocative descriptions

The best book I’ve read in ages… You have to read it.