A tour de force

Jean-Paul Sartre dominated the intellectual life of twentieth-century France to an extraordinary degree ... heralded as the "pope" of existentialism, he ranked as an international superstar

She writes as well as any writer alive about the pleasure of a good motor doing what it was designed to do . . . Cool and wise, with real power and control . . . This book has a real gallery of souls . . . As strong a statement about artistic purpose and sensibility as I've read in a while.

She seems to work with a muse and a nail gun, so surprisingly yet forcefully do her sentences pin reality to the page.

I honestly don't know how she is able to know so much (about motorcycle racing, Italian radical politics) and convey all of it in such a completely entertaining and mesmerizing way.

Kushner at her most freewheeling . . . Luminously beautiful . . . 'The Hard Crowd', which closes the book, allows us to see how Kushner has evolved over the twenty-year span of this collection.

New Journalism given a new lease of life . . . And then there's the frank pleasure of her sentences . . . I'm glad to taste something this sharp, this smart.

She's going to be one we turn to for our serious pleasures and for the insight and wisdom we'll be needing in hard times to come.

If you want to ride in a famous motorcycle race, then hang out with Keith Richards in 1990s San Francisco and finally consider the work of Marguerite Duras - and who wouldn't? - all you have to do is pick up this wide-ranging book of journalism.

Rachel Kushner's wonderful new book The Hard Crowd is a personal favourite . . . It's an exhilarating, voracious collection.

Rachel Kushner's dauntless essays [are] all propelled by a singular and ferocious curiosity.

Kushner proves as shrewd and daring in her essays as she is in her fiction, and a reader gets the same sense of tagging along with an author who has slept rough, thought hard, and gotten into her car to drive out and witness an event with her own two eyes . . . [A] dazzling collection.

This vitalizing essay collection . . . illuminate[s Kushner's] adventurous life and why and how she developed the skills to write about it with such breath-catching clarity and polished rigor, the literary equivalent of the fine-tuned mechanics of the motorcycles and classic cars she treasures . . . leaving her passengers exultant and enlightened.

Come for the sharp portraits of Jeff Koons and Denis Johnson, the blistering reportage from refugee camps and illegal motorcycle races, or the light-with-laughter-yet-heavy-with-yearning paeans to classic cars and the San Francisco indie scene of the 1980s; stay for the opportunity to witness the maturation of one of the most intelligent and distinctive literary sensibilities of our time.

With characteristic confidence and poise, Kushner unpicks highly charged issues.

Decidedly erudite . . . The Hard Crowd shows a writer intent on tackling each object of scrutiny with an unsentimental eye, not seeking to come to conclusions, but to sit with the problems that may emerge.

Kushner can really write. Her prose has a poise and wariness and moral graininess that put you in mind of Robert Stone and Joan Didion. This wariness lurks beneath a sensibility that's on constant alert for crazy, sensual, often ravaged beauty.

Award-winning novelist Kushner . . . who's also turned toward criminal-justice-reform activism, shifts modes with an essay collection that promises something for all who love her work. (Yes, there will be motorcycles).

The Hard Crowd is a vibrant love letter to the people who have inspired her... [Kushner is] as bold and adventurous in her writing as she has been in her life.

A compelling collection... The Hard Crowd is a portal into the lived experience of one of America's finest contemporary writers.

Collected over twenty years her [Kushner's] wry and vivid writing offer a fascinating insight into the themes and thinking that underpin her fiction.

The Hard Crowd is not so much Kushner's own memoir as a group biography of recklessness... Who better to narrate the lives of wrecked souls than the one who kept her head, storing up details of the wreckage?... [Rachel Kushner is] a vessel for excitement - the voice of a brood of Californian kids, a kind of Joan Didion for our times.

Kushner's first essay collection jostled through the colourful events and characters that have informed her fiction. It's quite the ride.

Rachel Kushner's essays have a way of grabbing you by the neck and pulling you into places you'd never normally go... The Hard Crowd is a great book.

Rachel Kushner's dynamic, incisive and glamorous prose style gives perfect expression to her reportage, essays and criticism, and The Hard Crowd, her first non-fiction collection, is an exciting book... she writes from the inside out and gives us the true story, the real deal.

The Hard Crowd underlines Kushner's non-fiction work as personal and immersive, much in the style of Joan Didion, and reveals the author as an inveterate outsider who embraces adventure.

Brilliant ... An absolute mind hug

Freyne's radar is precision-honed to find the madness within the mundane

More moving that I ever expected and somehow funnier than I assumed

Editor's Choice: A gorgeous story about friendship, adventure and the importance of taking risks.

AUDIO BOOK OF THE WEEK

A hilarious jaunt into the wilderness of women's friendship and the triumph of outrageous dreams.

Miss Benson's Beetle is an absolute joy - a wild, funny, and breathlessly exciting adventure story that's also a moving and beautifully drawn portrait of an improbable female friendship in a world still emerging from the trauma of two world wars. Joyce writes about Margery and Enid with such tenderness and compassion, such wisdom and humour, weaving an irresistible tale of frailty and strength, curiosity and courage, grief and hope.

Margery Benson dreams of finding a mythical gold beetle in New Caledonia. So she and her irritating assistant set sail from London in 1950-and become kindred spirits during an adventure both zany and harrowing. It's a wildly original, life-affirming tale.

A book that will have you howling with laughter the one moment and wiping away tears the next - my favourite read in years. Don't miss it.