The uncontested master of comic irony

Very funny - I laughed out loud sixteen times and giggle internally a statistically unverifiable amount. In short, a masterpiece... I cant think of anything like it

A bitter yet hilarious lampoon...a remarkable display of satiric vehemence. An extremely (in every sense) funny, nail-bitingly anxious work

When Philip Roth sends Richard Nixon to hell in Our Gang, there is delight in recognising that if there is a hell, Nixon will probably act there just as Roth describes him

Perhaps the funniest and most complex exercise in sustained political satire since Animal Farm

Outrageously hilarious

Metroland is a delicious book, sharp and witty and observant

One of the best accounts of clever English schoolboyhood I've read

Flighty, playful… Barnes succeeds in vividly recreating teenage precociousness, particularly what it feels like to be a young male encountering love and sex

A dazzling entertainer

Consummately elegant

He writes perceptively about the shift from self-absorbed teenager to adult.

If all works of fiction were as thoughtful, as subtle, as well constructed and as funny as Metroland there would be no more talk of the death of the novel

It's one of the best accounts of clever English schoolboyhood I've read

Irony and imagery are deployed with a finesse even Flaubert wouldn't wince at...consummately elegant