A lovely absorbing read, so evocative of student life. Alison Mercer really captures the passion of falling in love for the first time.

Alison Mercer has expertly spun an engrossing story about love, secrets and second chances.

Effortlessly readable and sharply realistic, this is grown-up chick-lit at its very best.

Funny and moving, this is a fab debut from Alison Mercer.

Mercer has a satirical eye which she puts to good effect in describing such cornerstones of middle-class life as private antenatal classes and bitchy newspaper columnists. A funny, promising debut.

A cleverly constructed story, full of trauma, playfulness and wisdom. When portraying fallible lives, Mackintosh’s writing never flinches.

Searing… Mackintosh manages to write a book that no one else could pull off with all the same weird panache, peeling back the surface of her main character to expose all the blood and guts and mess beneath.

It’s patchwork construction… works really well… a jolly, perky read

I’m currently very much enjoying Diana Evans’s novel Ordinary People, which takes a forensic look at the pleasures and perils of marriage and parenting and modern London living

Ordinary People offers a unique insight into the complexities and the challenges of modern life, identity and that lovely little thing we call love. From the moment I started to read it I was absolutely gripped - that’s how good it is. It is a beautifully crafted, honest exploration of how relationships are forged and deconstructed, and how the everyday and the remarkable can exist side by side.

There is something radical in how Evans depicts the lives of young, black people, faithfully, fully and quietly

A gorgeous, wild, layered novel

Ordinary People is a very funny book...a reminder of the power that only the novel has: to show you a familiar world from someone else's perspective

Sparkling... Rich, complex and quietly extreme, Ordinary People is a forensic study of human relationships, one that finds, like the best novels, universality in the specific. It is also a supreme London novel... In short, it's a joy from start to finish

Does literary fiction have a blind spot when it comes to race? When a novel like Diana Evans's Ordinary People feels unusual, you have to wonder... This is a wonderful novel – generous, clear-sighted and rich with the old-fashioned pleasure of characters you're left impatient to revisit

That rarest thing: a literary novel about real, recognizable human beings—a poignant portrait of middle life in London's middle class. Evans has given us four thirtysomething characters so perfectly drawn that they seem to come from a brilliant Netflix dramedy, but has rendered them with a classical prose so confident that it seems to come from a 19th century novel. Beach reading for the thinking beachgoer: as intelligent and insightful as it is hilariously entertaining.

Ordinary People is that rarest of books – a portrait that lays bare the normality of black family life in suburban London, while revealing its deepest psyche, its tragedies, its hopes and its magic. The words are infused with a beauty that leaves the reader spellbound and yet astounded by the familiarity of it all. I had not realised how much I longed for characters like these until I found them, brought alive here with such compassion. A wondrous book.

Ordinary People sings with every word. The writing is pitch perfect, the underlying politics of race and gender is never heavy handed, and the characterisation of south London is enviable. I know these streets and they beat to the music that runs through this book...a lyrical and beautiful story. It's a triumph

Intensely relatable

Diana Evans writes exquisitely beautifully about the interior landscapes of human relationships set against the urban and suburban cityscapes of London. Her characters are portrayed with depth, perceptiveness and complexity, and through the descriptions of their emotional journeys, we discover a language to understand ourselves

Diana Evans has masterfully crafted a beautiful, nuanced story about love, loss, and redemption. With compelling prose and an uncanny insight into the questions life throw at us as human beings, she has established herself as a voice to behold.

Evans' prose has a musical quality

A wonderfully warm and intelligent novel

13 new books to put a spring in your step’, mention: ‘Ordinary London lives are captured with lyricism and integrity… A quiet, vividly-drawn novel about the moments of angst and joy that make up everyday life.

Sheer energy and effervescence… Funny, sad, magnificent prose.

The agony of ordinary life is what makes Ordinary People an absorbing read. Evans gives us an entirely readable account of relationships, recognising how they defeat us, encircle us and leave us gasping for air.

Intelligent and thoughtful.

Rich, complex and quietly extreme… A joy from start to finish.

A painfully accurate analysis of a life stage.

[An] impressively controlled tale of marital disharmony, parental ambivalence and lost identity… There’s a deep underlying sadness here, but it’s a rewarding and ruthlessly funny novel.

This is a highly enjoyable novel, full of wit and sharp observation

Evans is a superb writer of emotional moments: how enchanting they are, how they both resist and inspire description… Evans’s prose is always magnificent, composed and unshowy

A sympathetic and smart study of two metropolitan couples on the brink. Evans paints a quietly agonising picture of everyday life that is at once specific and timeless

Steeped in London’s grit and enduring allure, this is a psychologically acute, sexy, funny and hugely affecting novel

The compromises we make in marriage and as parents are explored in Evans’ lyrical and entertaining study of two thirtysomething couples on the brink. With its accompanying playlist of Faith Evans, Amy Winehouse and Jay-Z, a beat pulses through this slice of south London life, as Evans’ characters celebrate Obama’s victory and come to terms with the end of their salad days.

Evans' writing is like water; her sentences ebb and flow and change course, mirroring the Thames as it wends its way in and around the characters' lives

A masterpiece of modern living

An amazing book full of wisdom and empathy

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