Funny, serious, touching, zany, delightful, revealing...a triumph of perception

Anne Tyler has won herself a devoted following. Rightly so: her novels are beautifully controlled, witty, subtle, with an undercurrent of human warmth

She is a writer who gets to the heart of the matter without being glib, and cleverly reveals the extraordinary in seemingly ordinary lives

Anne Tyler's touch is deft, her perceptions keen, her ear for speech phenomenal, her people triumphantly alive... Only a rarely talented novelist could have written this fine book

Her fiction is a quiet, gentle reminder of the goodness to be found in most ordinary lives

A transfixing and hyper-literate descent into relentless, inescapable despair . . . achingly funny, nothing short of sublime

The Pale King contains what's sure to be some of the finest fiction of the year . . . he was the closest thing we had to a recording angel

Sometimes as a critic the most important part of your job is to say: here, this is it, we've found it, someone's doing it. That someone was Wallace. He was the real thing

The Pale King gave me a pleasure and excitement that I can describe only as biological. That is to say, the book produced in me that very rare, warm, head-to-toe tingling that comes with admission to a paradise of language and intelligence

Remarkable

Everyone who cares about literature should buy it

Tyler writes with a generosity of spirit and an emotional truthfulness that makes you forget the bare mechanics of plot

Tyler uses simple, elegant prose to manifest her particular brands of realism and humour

Tyler distilled

Her novels assert, with acuity, compassion and inventive humour, the uniqueness and value of each human life... a carefully observed study of grief and its trajectory

Deeply rewarding novel about grief and hope, infused with gentle humour

Acutely, tenderly observed. Tyler is excellent on the ways we endlessly misread even those closest to us

Richer and more alive than the best work almost any other writer is producing

Deeply rewarding

All Hail Anne Tyler

She's a master storyteller and inventor of character

A funny, gently moving and insightful book

What could be mawkish and cloying is gentle and touching, not least because she is a very funny writer

In Tyler’s small slices of life there is poetry and wisdom

The ending teeters on the brink of sentimentality but such is her psychological insight, the truth of her writing, that if she says unlikely happy endings are possible, I believe her

This meticulous, gently humorous novel is concerned with the effects of grief, the stop-start nature of moving on and the role of friendships, however imperfect, in facing catastrophe. [Tyler] remains as gimlet-eyed as ever in portraying ordinary lives that have become unmoored

This novel's great achievement is to capture the tensions and subtleties of a married life cut short… I read [it] virtually in one sitting, but that's a fairly common experience with Anne Tyler books… I didn't want it to end. Which is also a fairly common Tyler thing

The Beginner’s Goodbye is a very funny book…every incident is at once recognizably true to life and yet somehow utterly off-kilter

Engaging, heartfelt and brutal.

Quite simply a masterpiece…at least as assured and vibrant in its characterization as Trainspotting, Skagboys is even more on the money politically… this novel more than any other , (including its brilliant predecessor) stands as our spiritual and moral history.

There is enough of what Welsh does well — needle-sharp dialogue, vivid characters and a certainty of place — to make Skagboys his best work in many years…an essential read.

Welsh always spins his yarns with grisly élan.

I ended up charmed beyond measure, if that is the right word for a novel whose odd moments of poignance are regularly booted into touch by death, disillusionment and dereliction.

Every bit as impressive as Trainspotting

Visceral, tragic and comic, with Welsh’s schlock-shock appeal

If you enjoyed Trainspotting, you will adore this prequel... I think that Welsh has achieved the impossible and produced a prequel that betters the main text

Filthy, furious and very funny, this is Welsh back on blistering top form

The strength of Cline's first novel, other than its geeky referencing of 1980s pop culture, is the characterisation of the Candide-like Wade and his redemptive quest in both VR and the real world.

If you grew up with an Atari or maybe had a Commodore 64 back in the day, you are going to really enjoy this one. Cline really captures the feeling of those good old days in Ready Player One.

Cline [crafts] a fresh and imaginative world from our old toy box ... Cline strikes the nerves of nerd culture as expertly as Andy played that skeleton organ in The Goonies.