Not just a book of the year but now one of my desert island books.

Delicious and dead-on... All the embarrassments and gratifications of European travel are preserved in the amber of Maxwell's much pondered, seemingly casual prose.

As the voices of Austen, Turgenev and Tolstoy have survived, so will Maxwell's. There aren't many truly great writers among us. William Maxwell is one of them

It's hard not to see it as a work of genius

His gentle urbanity is a joy

He combines educated intelligent and instinctive apprehension of human complexity in a way that would have earned Henry James' approval. William Maxwell is the very model of what a novelist should be

Reading 'The Chateau' is like meeting a very old friend with whom the conversation is always spontaneous, intimate, restorative and unpredictable... Maxwell is that rare thing, a kind writer... But what has made him so influential is his habit of interspersing his subtle accounts of character with sharp observations about human nature.

The novel successfully depicts misunderstandings, isolation and disappointment: are they sensitive to local traditions? Are they laughing at the right jokes? Are they tipping too much?

Perennially endearing

Maxwell's achievement is to show how human relationships work in spite of the confines of history, language and nationality

Stylishly, subtly, the enjoyment of getting to know another country is conveyed with authority and a perceptions that's rare in our careless times

An incredibly emotional read

A thrilling page-turner

This is a novel that strikes both horror and joy in the reader, the first-person narration deftly articulating Judith's escalating confusion and fear ... A talent to watch

A touching, delicate book, it's hitting the shelves with high hopes...On March 1, head out and buy Grace McCleen's book

A distinctive debut that pulls off the use of a child narrator in delightful style

Touching and funny… a compelling and wholly original debut.

Shimmers with little miracles.

This is a promisingly bold book and McCleen is a talent to watch

A gripping and mesmerizing debut of an unforgettable ten-year-old heroine and her battle with good and evil… A harrowing and powerful story about isolation and belonging

An original new voice... Haunting and absorbing, this is a joy to read

A seemingly slight work that is, in fact, possessed of almost infinite depth. It's an elegant inquiry into what we can know and how we can know it - and it's gripping too

It sets off a moving meditation on ageing, regret and the unreliability of memory

Has rightly been praised for its economy and elegance

Belatedly and deservedly, this was the year of Julian Barnes

Exquisitely written and deeply engaging

Elegant verbal exactness, analytic finesse and a witty portrayal of contemporary and 1960's life complement the intricate plot

A worthy Booker laureate of this or any other year, our most versatile novelist...a perfect present in these last days of the book as a singular object

A worthy winner of this year's Booker prize: short, but certainly not slight, precise and insightful

This novel packed more emotion into its 150 pages than any other I have read this year

Melancholic, suspenseful and thought-provoking

Several plot twists later, what started off as a thoughtful (and fascinating) meditation on memory becomes something close to a full blown thriller

Essential reading for any writer, aspiring or otherwise

A meditation on memory and regret slyly conveyed through the unreliable voice of a complacent man whose past gives him a nasty surprise

A deserving winner

Masterful, gripping and, above all, surprising

Barnes has always has an ear for the bleak comedy of the first person

Novel, fertile and memorable

Julian Barnes’ Man-Booker prize-winning novel has extraordinary power and emotional density

An eloquent meditation on relationships, emotional arrogance and the discomfort of remorse

The key to this slender, tantalizing mystery is on its opening page: what you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you have witnessed

His art is artful, often openly so, but never showy or obvious

Described in Justin Cartwright’s review as 'a very fine book, skillfully plotted, boldly conceived’

I am eager to read it, though I hear it needs to be read twice to be fully appreciated