Exquisite . . . This collection is made from language to live on and in. It's the sort of book you read with your body as much as your mind. I'm quite sure readers will find themselves transformed by it

It's both stunning and utterly logical that before embarking on the landmark American Trilogy where she would tackle the largest themes of public life with such personal detail and vehemence, Claudia Rankine's writing was grounded in this dazzlingly laser-like and movingly original meditation on not so much motherhood or parenthood as pregnancy itself. Rankine slides from one form to another, and animates everyday domestic life with a grand sense of literary history and sensibility. It's as if this book is pregnant with her entire poetic project

Plot is inexhaustibly complex, varied, and difficult-and as fearlessly and even grimly inventive and searching as one can conceive any book of poems as being. It instantly joins the few contemporary works ... whose gravity is synonymous with the passion and integrity of their intelligence

To read her work is to be drawn deep into a thought's unfolding, into the eerie landscape of a dream; the dislocation one feels is tempered by the assurance of the writing, the deftness of Rankine's experiments with words and ideas

I am awestruck. Quite simply, I have never read anything like Plot. Its stupendous intelligence . . . marks it as a masterpiece

Plot moves as in a picaresque novel, in which the body schemes and frightens, accompanied by Claudia Rankine's instinct for poetic surprise

A fiercely gifted poet . . . She knows when to bless and to curse . . . [and] makes you hopeful for American poetry

A startling and eloquent exploration of states in, about, and around maternity . . . This is an unsettling poetry of the body wrestling itself in the making of thought

Spiraling around the story of "Liv" and "Erland" and their future child, "Ersatz," this book-length poem embeds its loose "plot" in the sensations and anxieties of birth and child-rearing . . . striking . . . This book seems consciously aimed at the nexus of several different feminist avant-garde projects, from the nouveau roman of Monique Wittig to Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictee

[Claudia Rankine's] books trace their own sort of movement . . . In Plot, the crisis sharpens, revolving around life and birth-the narrative center is a woman reluctant to give birth to a child who is already growing inside her . . . surprising

An ingenious response to Covid, combining ancient Greek prophecy with the daily frustrations of lockdown to face up to our fears for the future

Lyrical and ambitious, humorous and disturbing at points, Delphi is a relatable tale ... Delphi gets to the heart of what we might not see coming when the future isn't on our radar

Delphi [...] deftly utilises the occult world to shine an unflinching light on domestic mundanity, midlife anxiety and our changed relationship with the future ... Pollard takes care to demonstrate that amidst overwhelming, life-altering experiences, we can find comfort in small miracles and moments - a smile from a loved one, or recovery from illness. An important reminder that there is a sense of hope and contentment to be found in the present

Delphi is a triumph of sly observation, wit and tragedy... dark and dangerous, disturbed and disturbing in equal measure - I loved it.

Consoling, harrowing, hilarious. I feel like it's healed me ...Pollard's narrator is so funny and so radically honest it leaves you reeling

Delphi is a compact miracle of a book

Bold, brave and uncompromising, Pollard has found a way to write about the last couple of years which is both truthful and enjoyable to read, which I didn't think was possible. Exhilarating, exciting, rare and beautiful

Vivid as fireworks, Delphi explodes with the ambivalence, rage and dread of middle years lived within a world of pandemic and climate collapse. Both terrifying and exhilarating

Using language that charms and beguiles, Clare Pollard cleverly creates moments of the darkest déjà vu, so that I was swept up into a story which I was both unnerved and reassured to recognise

Delphi delivers an urgency unlike any I've experienced. I loved this book so much; the language, the humour, the style, which reminded me of both Patricia Lockwood and Sheila Heti. A brilliant novel born of searing eloquence and sinister wit

Adjei-Brenyah may have the buzziest book of the year . . . A ferocious attack on America's for-profit prison systems.

Beautiful and brutal, with a really furious social commentary underpinning it.

Chain-Gang All-Stars surpasses all expectations...Adjei-Brenyah's acerbic vision lands like a lightning bolt of truth.

Chain-Gang All-Stars should pique your interest if titles like Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower and Atwood's Handmaid's Tale are more your vibe.

Makes explicit how the spirit erodes as the body becomes currency. Adjei-Brenyah writes sharply about the economy of spectacle and the fickle alchemy between futility and hope.

Told with bold, muscular prose, this book is filled with surprising tenderness. As big as it is dazzling. It's just wild how good and original this book is. A revelation!

This book will change you!...A masterpiece.

Adjei-Brenyah is...[an] acclaimed master of our futuristic nightmares...a keen observer of racial and socioeconomic disparities that result in a high number of Black people incarcerated. While this is set in the future, it feels uncomfortably close to the present.

A brutal, heart-wrenching story that feels so close to reality...A tale of survival and resistance in an unfair prison system.

[A] blazing debut novel...A damning indictment of mass incarceration, systemic racism, and the grotesqueries of unfettered American capitalism, Chain-Gang All-Stars is also a breathless dystopian thriller.

In a narrative world where the real is growingly more unbelievable than the make believe, Chain-Gang All-Stars is an uncanny, singular feat for literature. I've never read satire so bruising, so brolic, so tender and, really, so pitch-perfect. It's nuts brilliant. Just read it!

As vital as it is brutal. Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah illuminates darkness with the electricity of his prose. The massive weight of the subject is matched by the sheer scope of Adjei-Brenyah's imagination. A startling, important novel that will inspire and inform many conversations.

[A] ferocious debut novel...Adjei-Brenyah does not flinch. Neither does he miss his targets, because he has the stiff winds of history at his back...With Chain-Gang All-Stars he lets us think we're reading a satire, but soon reveals a mirror of our dystopian days that lie not too far away.

A complex, brutal, beautiful, panoramic takedown of the prison-industrial complex... At once original, its own fresh creation, and clearly part of a lineage of American literature that links the opening 'Battle Royal' chapter in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man to Native Son by Richard Wright, Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver and Soledad Brother by George Jackson... Adjei-Brenyah's distinguished novel updates this tradition to encompass our dizzying, barbaric, performative and capitalistic digital age.

With his sharp eye for satire and reverence for humanity, Adjei-Brenyah's latest explores the exploitation, violence, and false promises of the prison industrial complex, capitalism, and the country itself.

A chillingly dystopian tale.

A clear-eyed critique of our country's prison system, along with the profit and racism inherent in them.

At once a kaleidoscopic, imaginative examination of America's unjust prison system, and a fantasy-tinged spectacle, Chain-Gang All-Stars is likely to excite and provoke in equal measure.

A searing debut with an unforgettable voice, Chain Gang All-Stars will force you to reevaluate what freedom in America really means.

It is an up-to-the-minute j'accuse that speaks to the eternal question of what it truly means to be free. And human. Imagine The Hunger Games refashioned into a rowdy, profane, and indignant blues shout at full blast.

Breathtaking and pulse-pounding... Both the political allegory and the edge-of-your-seat action work beautifully. Readers will be wowed.

[An] enthralling debut... An unmissable read

Adjei-Brenyah compels the reader to look beyond the page, blurring the lines between modern America and the hellscape he so energetically imagines

Few others this year have touched Adjei-Brenyah for ideas and ambition… perhaps the most indelible novel of 2023

A fizzy love letter to the prototypical romcom

So much of Sittenfeld's work exists in the dissection and comprehension of female desire

Flirting with the tropes of its namesake genre, this playful novel follows Sally, a writer on an "S.N.L."-like show called "Night Owls," who falls in love with one of its guest hosts. Their relationship develops via e-mail in the post-grocery-wiping, pre-vaccine days of covid-19. When Sally decides to visit her beloved in L.A., their time together in his Topanga mansion requires her to navigate incredulity, insecurity, and an offer that she feels is an "affront to my independence." The novel is preoccupied with the instinctual nature of self-sabotage, and with the fulfillment that can come from defying ingrained impulses

Insightful romcom sparkles with real wit and wisdom

Whip smart and really funny

Scores big on giving readers an insight into the machinations of a TV writers-room

Full of dazzling banter and sizzling chemistry

If you ever wanted a backstage pass to Saturday Night Live, this book is for you

Excellent

Both a brilliant portrait of the comedy world and a witty grown-up love story. Lives up to its name