A brave and uncompromising book that lingers in the mind, Paradise is A.L. Kennedy on top form

This is a narrative that will not let the reader go - One of the most linguistically inventive and captivating British writers of the age

The book sings its encapsulated pain with the effervescent energy of laughter

Beautifully written...Her sharpest vision yet

One of Britain's most iconoclastic and fiercely independent talents, a writer who repeatedly tests our expectations... Compelling, even consuming

A writer of great power and subtlety, a specialist chronicler of depression... alcohol addiction, yearning and loss

Every sentence of Kennedy's fluid prose is to be savoured... An unflinching book, elevated by the sublime quality of Kennedy's writing. Lacerating comedy is pitted against passages of sheer beauty

Kennedy's lyrical evocation of the mind of an alcoholic draws on, and slyly subverts, a long distinguished tradition of hard-drinking narratives in Scottish literature, from Alasdair Gray to Irvine Welsh

In Paradise, A.L Kennedy weaves her word magic around one woman's determined embrace of alcohol

uplifting, moving and hilariously funny

While waiting for more of Adam Mars Jones's gripping Pilcrow sequence, I was beguiled by Kid Gloves (Particular Books), his memoir of his high court judge father, which is witty, sardonic and humane. There are some entertaining legal set pieces, one revolving round James Bond and Ian Fleming, and a great account of young Adam's coming out as gay over the New Year of 1977. His father was homophobic but came round, though he never seemed able to remember Adam's partner's name. one of the funniest passages describes Dad's irritation at not being able to cram all his honorifics on to his American Express Gold Card: he has to abbreviate them to "Sir Wm". A paradoxical character, affectionately recalled.

Worries must be raised about the book business by the way that one of the best memoirs not only of this year but many apparently struggled to find a publisher. Kid Gloves: a Voyage Round My Father by Adam Mars-Jones (Particular Books) takes a family situation that would have prompted many writers to gory score-settling - a liberal gay son providing end-of-life care to his father, a homophobic Tory judge - and produces an account that manages to be tender, sharp and funny while being kinder to the subject than you might expect and tougher on the writer who is sitting in judgement.

Funny and subtle... the book's special chemistry derives from the disparity between the painful facts described and the affection with which they are recounted

Top of my list is Kid Gloves, Adam Mars-Jones's funny, tough, scrupulously fair memoir of his late father, the irascible High Court judge William Mars-Jones. Their vexed relationship, rich in vulnerability, frustration and farce, is unpacked for us with grace and subtle wit, not least the moment when Mars-Jones fils has to tell Mars-Jones pére, "a homophobe's homophobe", that he is gay. ... In spite of these wounds, the overwhelming tone of the memoir is one of profound affection and forbearance.

Ingeniously constructed and full of insight

A subtle, topical, thought-provoking and painfully uncomfortable novel.

You can’t help feeling that this is an important book, and it’s hugely compelling… Worthy of its status as a Booker long-listee.

Jacobson’s most significantly Jewish book and quite possibly his masterpiece.

The persistent reader will be duly rewarded, as the denouement reveals a hidden logic and the book climaxes with a brilliant literary (and philosophical) coup.

Contemporary literature is overloaded with millenarian visions of destroyed landscapes and societies in flames, but Jacobson has produced one that feels frighteningly new by turning the focus within: the ruins here are the ruins of language, imagination, love itself.

The savagery of his imagery and his conclusions are impossible to forget, and maybe even to deny.

Confounds expectations but confirms Jacobson’s reputation.

I loved this book. A compelling tale that is bound to be a hot contender for the Booker.

Impressive, disturbingly timely – a massive step aside and a noticeable step up from most of his other fiction.

A pivotal – and impressive change of direction for [Jacobson].

Sentence by sentence, he remains perhaps the best British author around.

This is Jacobson at his provocative, surprising, brilliant best.

Thrilling written and the most ambitious work on the shortlist… Once you’ve worked out what’s going on, you’ll be gripped by its hints of an anti-Semitic armageddon.

It’s stark and daring.

A brilliant conspiracy yarn examining the manipulation of collective memory.

It's not just the subject of this book that will shock Jacobson fans, its distinct narrative style also comes as a surprise. A pleasant one at that.

A dystopian vision, haunting and memorable

It’s a triumph of creative writing. I finished it and started it again

Jacobson has written a subtle, topical, thought-provoking and painfully uncomfortable novel

chilling and provocative, Jacobson is at the height of his powers here

Hadley, who won the Hawthornden prize this month for The Past, is literary fiction’s best kept secret. Don’t let her fellow novelists keep her for themselves.

[The Past is] magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

There are hints of Larkin in her tender descriptions of landscape and imaginative responses to the ineffable… All her books are wonderful.

This is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.