[An] equally page-turning second collection… McMillan is 30, but writes with the melancholy understatement for an older writer… McMillan’s pared-back style puts great weight on each word, often with magnetic results… McMillan wears his influences on his sleeve – Thom Gunn, Sharon Olds’s explicit Odes, a flicker of Book of Matches-era Simon Armitage – yet brings them together in a voice that is confident, captivating and distinctly his own… Any fans of physical worrying how McMillan could top one of the most widely praised debuts of recent years should breathe a sigh of relief: playtime may be a quieter collection, but it’s a deeper, richer one too.

Andrew McMillan’s second collection, playtime, is every bit as impressive as his first, physical… He seems attuned to the world around him and he has a sly sense of humour at his command. He is more than promising now.

[In playtime] McMillan makes it clear that the poetics of physical wasn’t a one-off. As with all the best second outings, this collection firmly establishes his patent… [a] fully realised, deeply humane collection.

McMillan scrutinises the violent idealism of masculinity in monologues that are both tender and steely… told with courage, invention and charm.

Andrew McMillan's award-winning debut collection, physical, a raw and tender exploration of gay love and desire, heralded him as a new force in contemporary poetry. This, his second book, only cements that reputation... these poems are insightful, revealing, honest and brutally tender.

playtime is admirably devoted to intimacies and it has a tenderness to it even in its most private of moments... This is a triumphant collection of poems.

By returning to familiar ground and deepening his engagement with it, McMillan makes clear that the poetics of physical wasn’t a one-off. As with all the best second outings, this collection firmly establishes his patent… [a] fully realised, deeply humane collection.

Vivid, accessible and honest, sometimes uncomfortably so.

An unobstructed exploration of an important subject. McMillan is writing not only see-through but see-beyond poetry.

The loneliness and confusion of childhood are wonderfully rendered...reminiscent of Tyler's best work, such as Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant

Classic Tyler; she captures the defining moments of love and loss in one middle-aged woman's life and combines it with the ultimate upbeat ending, proving it's never too late to live the life you want

Tyler remains my most trusted literary companion… Freedom, flight, oxygen, breath, space: these themes whistle through Clock Dance's pages

Full of small delights... She has a keen eye and an alert ear, sympathy for her characters, an awareness of both life's comedy and its tragedy

In Anne Tyler’s skilled hands the everyday becomes significant… With beautifully observed characters and infused with quiet humour, this is another triumph

Tyler's tenderness with her protagonists shouldn't be undervalued; this, along with her attention to detail when it comes to the minutiae of quotidian life, is what makes one keep reading

Funny and interesting… Tyler’s novel presents a moving portrait of a woman, late in life, discovering an environment in which she can flourish

The book we'll all be reading this summer

A stellar addition to Tyler's prodigious catalogue

The most dependably rewarding novelist now at work in our country... Ms. Tyler’s career reveals a surpassing steadiness – of ambition, theme, output

I adore her and find her books immensely comforting. I loved her latest [Clock Dance]. It's such a bold book... a novel that encourages you to play the shrink

Tyler has a keen eye and an alert ear, sympathy for her characters, an awareness of both life’s comedy and its tragedy

One of this country's great artists...a powerful, stirring work. Tyler has lost none of the inspired grace of
her prose, nor her sad, frank humor, nor her limitless sympathy for women who ask for little and get
less

Her stirring story celebrates the joys of self-discovery and the essential truth that family is ours to define

Tyler's bedazzling yet fathoms-deep feel-good novel is wrought with nimble humour, intricate understanding of emotions and family, place and community – and bounteous pleasure in quirkiness, discovery, and renewal

I never look at a family, or a couple in a car, or a funeral cortege without thinking: "I wonder what's going on there." That's what Anne Tyler teaches you: never judge a cover until you've read its book

Tyler captures the quiet turmoil of family life with the utmost discretion, knowing that to understand it is not the same as being able to subordinate it

Rigorously intelligent, quietly funny and very precise about words

A beautifully observed portrait of one woman’s quiet quest for identity and purpose

Clock Dance is moving, funny acute… This is a beautifully structured work of fiction, full of narrative tension, which moves towards a fine diminuendo, followed by a crisis of possibility

A lovely novel following the author’s usual theme of hope and regret, renewal and contentment

Tyler has the ability to bring character to life in just a few sentences

Characters pulse with lifelikeness. The tone flickers between humorous relish and sardonic shrewdness. Dialogue crackles with authenticity… Clock Dance is a warmly appealing tale of timely recuperation

Anne Tyler’s astute new novel Clock Dance is fuelled by kindness, kindness that begins tentatively with false starts and blind spots and grows into the extravagant all-encompassing sort

I loved Clock Dance

Expect nuance and laser-eyed perception here, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author

Warmly appealing and sharply observant...combines comic relish with psychological and social shrewdness. Characters pulse with lifelikeness. Dialogue crackles with authenticity. Changes brought about by time are fascinatedly and fascinatingly observed

A moving, often spiky study of relationships and the far-reaching effects of trauma

A thought-provoking story that resonates with emotional depth

An immersive look into friendship, parenthood, sex, and grief - as well as the fragility of love. It is told with such detail, you're left wanting more

Beautifully written and observed

Evans is extraordinarily good on the minutiae of grief, family, and the fragility of love

a lyrical portrait of modern London

Placing culturally marginalised voices centre stage to explode open a world many of us know little about... [The Mars Room] left me in tears.

Crushing... A powerful, tragic novel.

[A] visceral portrait of prison life

The charm and wit of the incarcerated people in The Mars Room shines in Kushner's prose

A mysterious portrait of contemporary America and life on its margins... for fans of "Orange Is The New Black".

A very compelling read… hilarious and depressing and rage-inducing in equal measures.

Absorbing.

Lyrical, bleakly comic and, ultimately, intensely affecting

It is a necessary and compelling book, and this year’s must read

Rachel Kushner’s exhaustive research into what goes on within these walls

Kushner’s high-definition, high-impact prose is as electrifying as it is daring

The momentum of the novel resides in its prose, the spring and sass of a voice so vivid it can largely dispense with the mechanics of plot

A salty and hilarious novel from one of America's best living novelists.

Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room should be a favourite [to win the Man Booker Prize]. If you like your escapism as gritty as it gets, prepare to be hooked by this unflinching account of a female prisoner serving a double life sentence... The Mars Room is rarely easy reading, but the furore of voices and violence and injustice throws you right into the story and keeps you immersed there.

Kushner’s novel is a timely reminder that a country’s authoritarian tendencies can be most easily measured by the number of people it deems unworthy of freedom

Rachel Kushner knows how to sniff out a good character.

Rachel Kushner’s The Mars Room immerses you in the life of a high-security women’s prison in California, its central character Romy – accused of killing her stalker – both gritty and fragile. This was not a subject I thought would grip me, but in Kushner’s firm hands I was entranced. Much of the book is autobiographical – while never in prison herself, Kushner was the daughter of Beatniks and allowed to roam the dodgier areas of San Francisco as a teenager. The characters range from bullet-headed killers to a well-meaning male teacher whose ambiguities are brilliantly done. Romy’s trans friend Conan, “shoulders as broad as the aisle, and a jawline beard”, is delightfully free of the politically correct, while the style veers excitingly from straight narrative to scribbled lists like whimpers of despair.

Rachel Kushner's The Mars Room was a hot favourite on this year's Booker shortlist, and it's easy to see why… Kushner's atmospheric writing is compelling to the last.

Kushner’s writing is the most marvellous I read this year… time and again I found myself rereading paragraphs of The Mars Room for her perfectly turned sentences, the music of her prose

[A] brilliantly compelling read