Her last and perhaps greatest novel

Her finest book

Her searing last novel ... mesmerizing

A tremendously empathetic book, it is full of compassion for people and animals, whose pain is felt vividly... Unlike so many hyped debut collections, Slide more than lives up to readers' expectations.

Mark Pajak's skillful poems keep themselves open, especially to childhood and adolescent experience. Even so, they are far from frail - their insight and imaginative verve make them robust as well as eloquent.

In this chilling and tense collection, Mark Pajak takes us with him into the nettles, out on the dark country lane, to the dilapidated shed - holding us with his acute precision of imagery - so we become all too aware of that "long squeal" of violence under the poem's "fluttery lid". A visceral and vital debut.

I was stunned by these poems. Fresh, urgent, alive, awake, with such a strong visceral impact I couldn't sleep. Mark Pajak offers a high-res lens through which we share his vision of the suffering of children and animals. There is a fierce intelligence at play here, emotional, physical and cerebral. The combination is genius.

Hands down a knockout debut, Slide isn't messing around. The poems have a live buzz and hum about them - everything is working to such precise and intense ends.

Pajak's poetry is extreme, its subjects often united with elements and seasons... his stories' endings haunt the hearer like the close of a dark, irresistible song.

Finally, a brilliantly funny and sad look into the heart of the pandemic lockdown... Pollard's debut novel, Delphi, is a greatest hits of COVID-era angst that manages to avoid cliches and tired complaints while being reassuringly familiar at the same time... This is the COVID novel I've been wanting to read - the COVID novel that feels brilliantly true to real life while elevating the monotonous drag of lockdown into something funny, sad and universal... [in] compact, concise language... Characters, settings and even whole scenes are drawn in quick, exquisite precision full of wit and pathos. Its intimacy reminded me of Sally Rooney and its subtle, sly humor of Miriam Toews' All My Puny Sorrows... a reassuring reflection in the darkness

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

Intimacies... completely revamped the way I thought about fiction, What would it mean to write without all the tricks that a write can so easily hide behind?

Intimacies is an existential thriller laced with tensions on both personal and political levels.

An elegant study of the rewards and dangers of intimacy... Kitamura's subtle and perceptive novel glitters with insight into language love and the way we interpret others

Deft and sharply written, with a beautiful rhythm and clear voice, it's one of my favourite novels of the past few years.

Katie Kitamura's Intimacies - she's an incredible writer. It's fiction and a really beautiful exploration of how we can live everyday life while complete horrors and atrocities are happening in the world - how both things coexist.

A jewel of a novel that will surely become a classic... enthralling and unmissable

A celebration of love and loyalty among women.

Big-hearted, generous and brimful of emotion, this a gorgeous, life-enhancing read

It is a beaut. It's a celebration of women and of womanhood. I see my mother in this, I see my sister ... This book is a joy.

If language - lyric, lovely and funny, steeped in County Tipperary - and women (men come and go, rarely center a chapter and are often useless, sometimes cruel) are of no interest to you, The Queen of Dirt Island is not your next read. Ryan's book is a celebration, in an embroidered, unrestrained, joyful, aphoristic and sometimes profane style, of both ... The Queen of Dirt Island gives the women their due, and the reader is rewarded.

Donal Ryan's The Queen of Dirt Island is a little Irish miracle ... there's as much implicit wisdom in these pages about how to live as how to write ... Ryan has his own emotional range and a way of capturing the largeness of what look like tiny lives but aren't

Ambitious, unsettling and funny, this book is full of desire and mischief with surprising results.