That young man holds the future of the English novel in his hands

Isherwood’s prose fizzes and bubbles lightly like an alka-seltzer in water before sinking like a brick in the pit of your stomach. It sits with you and stays with you.

From the dusty fields of Zimbabwe to the refugee camps of South Africa, this is a heartbreaking, unputdownable tale of prejudice, resilience and brotherly love.

Gripping, suspenseful and deeply compassionate

This is a moving and important story about the brutality that takes place when dictators rule and hatred mounts. But it is ultimately uplifting when, united by football, a group of South African refugees reach the Street Soccer World Cup final.

Wonderful. A must-read for anyone who loves international YA fiction . . . very brave

Gut-wrenching . . . plenty of material to captivate readers: fast-paced soccer matches every bit as tough as the players . . . heartbreaking twists of fate, that will endure in readers' minds

I found this story incredibly troubling and moving; Deo and Innocent will stay with you.

A tough and heart-rending story, but one that needs telling

Very stylish, observant and oh so spiky, this is an incredible, often uncomfortable novel that you just can't put down... Modern, vibrant, funny and dark 5/5

Lee's the real deal - a British writer on the cusp of greatness... A brilliant powerful dissection of modern Britain.

an excellent novel… A harrowing look at the sleazy underbelly of the corporate world that never pulls its punches.

A tense and disturbing novel.

A quite superb piece of work.

Sparky... modern... brilliant

[A] discomforting and acute tragicomedy ... The bleaker and darker his book becomes, the better it gets, building to a shocking and expertly executed conclusion. Tipped for the top on publication of his first novel, Lee here confirms his talent

For all painful events it covers, this is a joyful book. Lee educates us in the beautiful mess of humanity surrounding this tragic event. Joy is one of the best new novels this year.

A black comedy of exuberance and bite … original, and brilliantly executed; the characters’ voices … ventriloquised with flair … This is the wittiest, most addictive piece of literary yuppie-bashing since Martin Amis’s Money. Lee is a writer to keep an eye on.

A major new voice in British fiction.

A brilliant book... Jonathan Lee is one of those rare, agile writers who can take your breath away.

[Joy] displays a real flair for narrative and characterisation…Highly accomplished…The closest comparison that can be made is with Joshua Ferris’s Then We Came to the End, which shares a similarly bravura command of narrative voice…Exquisitely and surprisingly written…it proves that Lee is a significant talent and that his future work should be well worth awaiting.

Lee’s writing is witty and engaging, containing something of the wearied disgust of Raymond Chandler’s prose…These four voices confiding in the counsellor are entertainingly distinct…The novel’s outstanding achievement, however, is the central, spiralling narrative that Jonathan Lee threads among these personal accounts: the intimate story of how Joy came to fall, a forensic portrayal of despair that shows Lee to be an exceptional, brave prose stylist. The dark revelations in the book’s final pages are disturbing while not gratuitous, but Lee also allows some credible room for optimism among these cluttered lives. Funny and humane, Joy is an enormously impressive piece of storytelling

Lee's the real deal - a British writer on the cusp of greatness. This novel follows the aftermath of lawyer Joy Stephen's apparent suicide. The corporate and personal explode in a brilliant powerful dissection of modern Britain.

Jonathan Lee’s second novel, Joy charts the final day in the life of a high-flying young lawyer. Lee writes with extraordinary vividness, with prose so sharply defined it takes your breath away.

With its supple prose, ingenious structure, wit and slow-burn sympathy, Joy is a sly miracle of a novel.

[One] of Britain’s most exciting writers… I loved how Jonathan Lee’s Joy gradually unravels through different characters…The ending of Joy is brilliantly shocking. I finished it three weeks ago and it’s still playing on my mind… Something about Joy’s slow and brooding story really affected me…Lee manages to make every voice distinct…It is Joy’s complexity which keeps you reading…[A] wonderful book.

Lee constructs office scenes easily, weaving together numerous characters and dialogues with flair…the writing crackles.