If you have already read it, that's wonderful, for chances are you love it too, and know how brilliant it is. And if you haven't read it, or perhaps have never even heard of it, well, that's wonderful too, because you are still lucky enough to be able to read it for the first time ... A perfect novel ... What writing! Economical, piquant, beautiful, true .... Mrs Bridge is one of those books that can suffuse a room with happiness when someone brings it up

This is the first time that I have finished reading something and then immediately returned to the beginning to read it again. It's incredible. It's one of the best books I've ever read

How it is done I only wish I knew

It is very, very funny, often moving and sad, and written with an uncompromising realism that one rarely comes across. To me the Bridges were a revelation: I cannot recommend them too highly

Written from a kind of tilted, ironic angle, it's often very funny... and if this were all Mrs Bridge was, it would still be one of the sharper novels about mid-20th-century domestic life. But Mrs Bridge is so much more than that...It's a book that is smart and knowing and makes its reader feel as if they're in on a joke, while at the same time gradually coaxing them to feel more and more empathy for its vaguely absurd main character, and ultimately playing them like an emotional Stradivarius

Intimate ... affecting ... very funny ... Mrs Bridge is a reflection of you and me, an exemplar of our shared humanity

Connell never mocks or condescends, but wrings every drop of comedy and pathos from his hidebound heroine's predicament

Evan S. Connell's portrayal of the decline and fall of a 1950s Kansas City housewife charts perfectly the tragedy of the unexamined life

An exquisite mixture of sympathy and ironic detachment ... Connell's writing has a terse, hard-bitten flavour, but the chapters tend to resolve themselves into resonant, Austen-like aphorisms: "While marriage might be an equitable affair, love itself was not"

Eccentrically detailed…Aridjis scrambles your brain, not with high-modernist pyrotechnics but by the stealthier means of undermining the assumption that a novel’s words exist to advance the story…You enjoy Luisa’s company without ever being quite sure why she wants us around

Sea Monsters is destined to be a classic: a richly imaginative, reflective and mesmerising novel

Aridjis’s coming-of-age novel is rich in atmosphere, and there’s an undeniable charm to its dreamlike narrative

A searingly hypnotic work, a dazzling tale of enchantment and disenchantment

Intense and impressionistic, it seems to hang on in the air long after the last page.

The prose is mesmerising with strange and beautiful observations

A dreamy, fantastical novel packed with lush description

A dreamy, wandering tale of teenage ennui and searching, and the pull of the sea . . . Aridjis’s sentences are luminescent and imagistic . . . A lovely, surreal novel

Ethereal and ruminative . . . Brilliant in her ability to get inside the head of her young narrator, Aridjis skillfully renders a slightly zonked-out atmosphere of mystery and the mind of a young romantic, resulting in a strange and hypnotic novel.

At once precise and impressionistic, [Sea Monsters] sympathetically navigates between dreams and disillusionment, while preserving intact its deeply beguiling spell

Sea Monsters is a treasure chest of Luisa’s deftly curated visions

Aridjis draws the reader in with gorgeous and poignant descriptions of setting, essayistic digressions on history and art, and moody suggestions of violence. She’s like a dreamier W. G. Sebald, or Baudelaire set to a soundtrack of Joy Division and the Cure. Further, there’s a sense of playfulness in Aridjis that a lot of people trying to write this kind of fiction never achieve

Aridjis weaves into being a magical world of youthful daydreams and desires, and yet she never quite allows us to escape the other, less magical world lurking behind it

Like [Tessa Hadley's] previous fiction, Late in the Day explores the seams and fault lines of private life with unsentimental clarity... Hadley tells her story in cool, unemphatic prose, eschewing rhetorical crescendos even at moments of crisis and instead conveying the intensity of her characters’ experience through striking metaphor.

A fine-grained novel of friendship, loss and jealousy.

As ever, [in Late in the Day] Hadley's psychological insight is remarkable. She is deeply interested in the minutiae of relationships and the way men and women interact... One of our finest living writers, and if you haven't read her yet then you really must.

For 16 years, [Hadley’s] fiction has turned a beady, amused eye on ordinary lives, illuminating them with quiet authority… virtually all her sentences are perfect… an acute and beautifully observed novel.

Hadley's writing is lyrical, perceptive and has great emotional heft. Go read [Late in the Day]!

Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day promises an intriguing study of the way members of a close-knit group of friends react to the sudden, unexpected loss of one of their number.

Hadley’s great strength is her wise, fine-grained observation of interpersonal relations… Hadley moves with ease between perspective and also back and forth in time.

Tessa Hadley is easily one of my favourite authors writing today, and her new novel – Late in the Day... has been highly praised by everyone I know (and, crucially, trust) who's already got their hands on it.

Tessa Hadley is well-known for her inimitable portrayal of character and her latest effort, Late in the Day, is no disappointment... A smart exploration of human nature, desire, and friendship.

A penetrating observer of human behavior, [Hadley] has a gift for dialogue that bristles with what remains unsaid… vividly imagined… Hadley presents a masterly portrait.

Strange, unsettling — eerily beautiful, discomfiting, stay-up-late-addictive, sometimes hair-raising... Always, it’s Hadley’s high-res magnification on the interplay of marital (and friendship, and parental) dynamics that supplies her work’s steady gold.

[Hadley’s] prose is a form of civilised conversation... Late in the Day is a very good novel indeed… [Hadley] knows when to let silence speak, and she has the rare gift of writing dialogue which both rings true and hints at what had been left unsaid but is keenly and sometimes painfully felt.

A clever, compassionate novel that sings to the possibility of renewal in late middle-age.

[A] splendid, perceptive book… Hadley has expertly examined the complications and intimacies of marriage and family in such novels as The Past, The Master Bedroom and Clever Girl. In Late in the Day she continues her persistent exploration of human frailty and resilience, moving easily between the present and the past to reveal the hard edges and silent compromises that shape all relationships.

Her prose has the penetrating quality of Henry James at his most accessible… and is alert, as Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen were, to how time sculpts, warps or casually destroys us... A quiet triumph.

Late in the Day is confident, brilliant, dark and interesting.

Tessa Hadley’s brilliant new novel – an event that always sparks joy… [– is an] elegantly written, ironically witty book… [Hadley] is constantly being favourably compared to Virginia Woolf – as well as Jane Austen and Henry James.

This is not a novel filled with incident, its pleasures are perception, insight and the intense examination of emotions… A very grown-up read.

Tessa Hadley’s compelling new novel, Late in the Day, is a subtle, delicate evocation of modern life… Hadley’s observation is pin-sharp: whether describing a contemporary student’s house, a late-night drive, or simply a quiet room with only the reading light turned on, there is a shapely intelligence at work… There is something of Iris Murdoch’s fierce attention to the physical here.

Tessa Hadley has become literary fiction’s chronicler-in-chief of the lives and loves of the English middle classes… Conveying their lifestyle with shrewd economy… Hadley relies on patient, persuasive observation to draw us into a satisfying family drama of hopes and regrets as viewed from the fag end of middle age.

Tessa Hadley’s great success as a novelist lies in… examining her characters with an unusual degree of psychological subtlety. Her particular strength is to combine a deep excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects.

Clever and thoughtful… [Late in the Day] is wholly impressive.

Hadley… [is] authoritative and powerful… a complex story structure juxtaposing present and past and featuring carefully timed revelations.

This is the perfect example of domestic fiction done well… Hadley's prose is measured, spare and utterly perceptive of the human condition.

Extraordinarily skilled and penetrating.

The language is poetic and beautifully crafted… [and it] is the measured intimacy of Hadley's language that allows her to capture in so few words, the whirring emotions that stir beyond the surface.

Crisp, considered prose.

Exquisitely written… A slow burn that’s as elegant as it is crushingly emotional.

Late in the Day… [is] beautifully written with moments of real tenderness — I found it immensely enjoyable and thought-provoking.

A wonderfully involving, intelligent and subtle.

One of the best literary offerings so far this year.

A prime study of the modern condition.

Tessa Hadley is one of those rare authors who keep getting better and better… the writing is joyous, and the conclusion will set your heart singing.

Hadley’s prose is so elegant, her quiet observations on ageing, adultery, motherhood and art so penetrating, it is pure reading pleasure.

Unflinching, intelligent and fascinating

Hadley’s elegant sentence-making is pure joy, combining scathing observation with careful compassion in a novel.

A stunning read by a masterly writer.

Late in the Day will delight fans of Tessa’s work and is an excellent introduction to her style for those unfamiliar with her novels. It’s a gentle yet impactful and deeply thought-provoking book that will leave you reflecting on your own choices and relationships – and makes a perfect beginning to a new year of reading.

A brilliant, beautiful novel populated by multifaceted characters and lit by Hadley's insight and skill.

Reflective, poignant and beautifully written, it reminds us that the constant in life is change.

Compelling.

[A] compelling novel… Hadley captures the way old feelings, longings and hidden secrets unravel tight-knit relationships.