[Zusak] flings his readers straight into the deep end of his new vast, teeming novel . . . Warm and heartfelt . . . This is a tale of love, art and redemption; rowdy and joyous, with flashes of wit and insight, and ultimately moving.

If The Book Thief was a novel that allowed Death to steal the show... [its] brilliantly illuminated follow-up is affirmatively full of life.

The wait is over.

This vast novel is a feast of language and irony. There is sly wit on every page... it is hard not to fall a bit in love with it.

Bridge of Clay has been more than a decade in the making, and it shows: The characters are clearly loved, and the artistry of language will leave you gasping at times.

Devastating, demanding and deeply moving, Bridge of Clay unspools like a kind of magic act in reverse

Eleven years after his multi-million selling hit The Book Thief, Zusak has returned with this sweeping and compelling family tale... Give it your time and you'll be repaid with a moving and epic read.

Bridge of Clay is one of those monumental books that can draw you across space and time into another family's experience in the most profound way.

Exquisitely written ... A sensitively rendered tale of loss, grief, and guilt's manifestations

This book BLEW ME AWAY

A captivating book with a mighty, fearless heart, Bridge of Clay is filled with characters to believe in and care about ... achingly moving, delightfully funny, and thoroughly uplifting.

Unusual, boisterous and playful

This epic family saga is a sweeping reflection on love and loss etched in vibrant writing, vivid characterisations and heartfelt emotion . . . A book to lose yourself in on long autumn nights.

Markus Zusak crafts an unforgettable saga.

In a complex narrative that leaps through time and place and across oceans, Zusak paints a vivid portrait of the brothers trying to regain their balance by keeping their family’s story alive.

If The Book Thief is his most famous book, Bridge of Clay is his magnum opus.

[A] journey in a unique circumnavigatory style, blending past and present until we reach its heart-wrenching conclusion… The prose sings with spunky originality.

A sweeping story following the five Dunbar brothers through times of grief, love, and anger, Bridge of Clay is a time-jumping, dreamlike exploration of family.

A beautiful object that will grace any holiday home's unfixably wobbly bedside table. The cover feels like a cracked china plate, decorated with a clever re-working of the willow-pattern; like the contents, it is subtle and clever. Haddon writes superb books for children, teenagers and grown-ups, and gets every voice in this one dead right. He is also a master craftsman, so this complicated narrative moves with the speed and certainty of released, unhappy holidaymakers hitting the homeward road. So shove this in your holidaying bag. You may have made a mistake with the booking, but you won't with the book.

Haddon has penetrating compassion for even his least prepossessing characters. He’s frequently acute about the details of speech, response and self-presentation that differentiate people, and particularly so about the weird co-existence in us all of animal instincts and higher yearnings: hunger with grief, physical pain with spiritual need, hot lust with the desire to connect. His characters – the whole befuddling gaggle of them – are unquestionably felt, and felt for, and even loved. Haddon has created a family whose problems feel warmly immediate and utterly contemporary.

CURL UP WITH…The Red House by Mark Haddon. An English family’s holiday – and the midlife and adolescent crises that erupt during it – is scrutinised from eight points of view in Mark Haddon’s warm and witty novel, which showcases his flair for observational comedy.

Mark Haddon’s latest is his most mature work to date. It’s mature in terms of both content and style, and reading The Red House there’s a sense that this ‘growing up’ is quite purposely Haddon’s intention. An effortlessly engrossing and richly rewarding read.

It's an old saying that you choose your friends but not your family and the family reunion has been well-used in literature, but Haddon breathes new life into it. He's never shied away from the difficult subjects and he deals sensitively with a child's burgeoning homosexuality but his real skill, his genius is in his understanding of mental problems, that disassociation between the mind and the brain. It's a book which is so right in every small detail but a gem when taken altogether.

The book gave me the ever-changing, fascinating and the feeling that I was looking through a looking glass. The eight of them have their own secrets, longings and resentments which only make them as human as you and I. The writing zips in montages and sometimes it becomes difficult to figure who is carrying the baton, though once you get used to the writing, it isn’t difficult to figure. The language and symbolism is weaved very well for a story of a dysfunctional family. In some parts, it almost reminded me of Faulkner’s, “The Sound and the Fury”. The Red House by Mark Haddon is a rollercoaster of emotions and all it works surprisingly well and all adds up at the end of the book. I would definitely and most certainly recommend this read for the long summer weekend that comes up.

Haddon can marry extraordinary perception with uncluttered language... He also burrows into the minds of his protagonists with astute precision

It looks like Mark Haddon is about to have a great big success all over again

Brilliantly readable… Comic and bittersweet

A closely observed domestic drama…

Characteristically original, deftly observed...

A beautifully orchestrated novel that gently questions how we define success

[Haddon] shows a knack for portraying family dynamics…

Mark Haddon proves himself a master of the domestic drama

Gripping drama