A macabre but unforgettable tale

One of his very best… Deliciously disturbing.

An unforgettable tale

Hypnotic

An extremely assured, technically adept and compelling piece of work

Marvellously creates the atmosphere of youngsters given that instant adulthood they all crave, where the ordinary takes on a mysterious glow

A shocking book...irresistibly readable

Darkly impressive

A superb achievement: his prose has instant, lucid beauty and his narrative voice has a perfect poise and certainty. His account of deprivation and survival is marvellously sure, and the imaginative alignment of his story is exactly right

It is difficult to fault the writing or the construction of this eerie fable

An intoxicating exploration of male-dominated workplaces . . . NSFW is gripping, with a lot to unpack, making it excellent book-club fodder

An energetic page-turner with plenty of delicious insights into Hollywood . . . and countless witty, wry passages

Rachel Joyce has a genius for creating the most damaged and difficult character and making us care deeply about their redemption. Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North is a powerful finale to her classic trilogy of heartbreak and healing.

At last it's Maureen's turn! It may only have the physical heft of a novella but Rachel Joyce's angry-sad latest packs the weight of a long marriage into the space of several well ironed handkerchiefs. Just brilliant.

Maureen Fry is wonderfully complex, flinty and closed and obsessive yet full of love and concern for others as she navigates her present and her past, carrying her terrible burdens of grief and guilt.
Rachel Joyce is deeply attuned to the complex rhythms of life and love and she sublimates this understanding, sentence by delicate, powerful, glistening sentence into an unforgettable story. It's beautiful all through, but the closing chapters are just astonishing, transcendent and hope-filled and life-affirming. I'll never forget this wonderful novel or the sunny, slightly teary day I spent reading it.

This book is short but very special. As fans of Rachel Joyce might expect, it's funny, touching and quite beautiful. It's also packed with wisdom about love and loss - and is sure to provide comfort to anyone who's known grief.

Maureen is so beautifully and unflinchingly portrayed - a complex contradiction of brittle and prickly with an underbelly of fragility and fear. Her journey - both physical and psychological - is compelling and profoundly moving and leaves the reader feeling fully satisfied and just a little lighter.

In this slender, lyrical novel, Rachel Joyce offers a story as epic and encompassing as that wide-armed angel of the North. A journey of redemption, forgiveness and love. A journey you don't want to miss.

Rachel Joyce writes with incredible depth, beauty and heart. Reading her prose is like listening to great music - sometimes soft and sweet, sometimes heart-rending, always beguiling. This is an emotional story about loss, resilience and reconciliation. Maureen Fry is a prickly kind of star... but wow, how she shines!

Beautifully written and endlessly touching, Rachel Joyce once again captures what it means to be human in the final book of her wonderful trilogy.

Maureen is the sort of person we pass in the street every day, every hour, and probably give little thought to. She is difficult perhaps, a little brittle, unable to engage successfully with the world, and maybe hard to warm to - an embattled figure often lost against the vast opera of life. But Rachel allows us to see into her complex universe, feel first-hand her fears, the profound longing, the grim phantoms of the past, the ordered rebelliousness, and strange, dark sense of humour - and of shame. This story also happens to tie three life-affirming, vital and unpredictable novels together into a perfect, never-ending dance..

This is a deceptively simple story of love, forgiveness, fulfilment and hope. I can't think of any other novelist quite as tender and compassionate as Rachel Joyce, who understands that miracle of transformation when human fragility becomes strength of spirit.

This is a fitting and deeply moving end to the trilogy of Harold Fry. A portrait of a woman adrift in grief, it is as fragile as a songbird and just as beautiful.

Profoundly moving and deeply human, this story of self-discovery and forgiveness is essential reading. I loved every word.

I adored Harold & Queenie, but who knew Maureen waited in the wings to steal my heart? A testament to just how exquisitely Rachel Joyce understands people, and written with kindness and such perception. I can't recommend it enough.

I was enthralled from the first page of this short, powerful book. Maureen is a wonderful, frustrating character--so rigid, and so frightened of what she might learn about herself and her own past. We all have some Maureen inside us, and so the journey we take with her across England and into her own personal tumult is a satisfying, visceral one.

Astonishingly powerful... Truly stunning