A magical debut…a gorgeous novel that should resonate with fans of Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife… A breathtaking tale full of love, hope and heartbreak. You’ll be utterly captivated from the first page

Beautiful, sad, moving, fascinating and original. I loved it.

A stellar love story

Exquisitely layered, thrilling novel, which leaps across centuries and continents to delve into the role of destiny and the elusiveness of perception and memory.

A spellbinding tale of love and loss, aglimmer with passion and melancholy.

Beautiful, haunting.

A beautifully imagined and original conceit…. There is no escaping the undeniable artistry of this book, a clever triumvirate of love, ghosts and time-travel.

A beautiful love story.

Her laconic tone and measured prose belie the novel’s dramatic content… Sedgwick is a highly evocative writer who makes excellent use of nature to showcase her themes… Her charming debut maps the world’s big questions on an even larger plane’

A fluid narrative voice, pointedly lyrical. And, as in the work of contemporary fabulists like Kelly Link, Helen Oyeyemi and Audrey Niffenegger, the real intersects matter-of-factly with the supernatural…Many of this novel’s pleasures have to do with teasing out the implications of Sedgwick’s intricate pattern…This web of associations, spun by recurring images and figures, lends a different spin to the idea of a love that’s meant to be.

Haunting and beautiful, THE COMET SEEKERS follows a constellation of lives from modern Antarctica to medieval England, all of them connected by an extraordinary mystery hidden deep in the past. A captivating story, deftly told, about those who are driven to explore, and those who must stay behind

The Comet Seekers is a brave and tender debut from one of the brightest new stars of the literary world. It's one of the most vivid, original and magical books I've read in years

Readers will be enveloped in the magical world that Sedgwick creates and will grapple with the big issues she tackles—love, family, freedom, and loneliness. Those who are drawn to intimate stories of family drama are sure to respond to this beautiful, character-driven novel

Sedgwick’s balance of scientific accuracy, artful use of language and storytelling skill makes this tale glow… A timeless, intimate and magical book.

· A book that reveals its subtle complexities gradually as it gives way to a central story that feels at once astronomical and homespun.

[The Comet Seekers] is full of life: languorous, homely, fleeting and heavily affected by its past.

[The Comet Seekers is] my favourite of this year. Her story of many lives linked by comets over earth is brave, tender, vivid and magical.

Beautiful, very moving and different from anything else.

Humour, grace, solace...A light-footed meditation on mortality, mutability and how to keep your head in troubled times

Autumn is a beautiful, poignant symphony of memories, dreams and transient realities

[Ali Smith] is simply incapable of writing a dull paragraph

Bold and brilliant, dealing with the body blow of Brexit to offer us something rare: hope.

The novel of the year is obviously Ali Smith's Autumn, which managed the miracle of making at least a kind of sense out of post-Brexit Britain.

Ever-inventive...Autumn is the first serious Brexit novel...In a country apparently divided against itself, a writer such as Smith is more valuable than a whole parliament of politicians.

With a queasily gripping, insidiously sad narrative, and an ending that completely rewires everything you thought you knew, Doyle delivers through the paralysed character of Victor a devastating verdict on present-day Ireland, still imprisoned by an ugly past.

There’s a moment right at the start of Roddy Doyle’s new book, Smile, that will make you shiver – dark undercurrents under a banal exterior… More experimental in form, and with less humour than you might expect from Doyle, Smile is the 59-year-old author’s attempt to shake us out of complacency… For my part, the book’s triumph rests on Doyle’s ability to reflect how Victor’s experience of abuse has unmoored him from the people around him.

In a sharply observed novel, Doyle explores memory, relationships and sanity.

Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humour and the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before.

The final pages of the novel are shocking, and they turn everything preceding it on its head. It’s testament to the power of Doyle’s writing that the ending is deeply moving, and so very sad.

One that stuck with me for a long, long time after I had finished it… This is one of my favourite books of the year so far. How the story ultimately plays out left me satisfied, cold and off-balance. A rare thing.

A surprise. It’s unsettling and evocative, but not what you’d expect from the beloved author… The wit and sharp dialogue are classic Doyle, but the dark, unexpected ending will linger long in the mind. A brilliant read.

Who writes the lives, hopes, dreams, sorrows and failures of ordinary people with greater insight, empathy and humanity than Roddy Doyle?... It’s as profound, funny, sad and shocking as anything Roddy has ever written.

So cleverly written we are caught up in the narrative and the final reveal is deeply disturbing. Doyle has again proved himself an author who can create the sense of time and place that takes the reader into the backstreet bars of Dublin and shows the dangerous undertow of life in Ireland.

This is a performance few writers could carry off: a novel constructed entirely from bar stool chatter and scraps of memory. But you can’t turn away. It’s like watching a building collapse in slow motion… Doyle has perfected a narrative technique that’s elliptical without feeling coy.

[Doyle] experiments with time, adding an edgy dream-like quality to the writing… There is no shortage of the author’s trademark dialogue where the men chat about their favourite topics, basically pilfering of Doyle’s own Two Pints Facebook wheeze… Smile is a precise perceptive study of male vulnerability and quietly portrays the stunted life of a lonely, damaged man.

It’s a captivating story that has all the features his readers love him for: razor-sharp dialogue, humour and warm evocations.

In contrast to the manic colloquial energy of Doyle’s early work, this novel, his eleventh, feels moody and spare – a meditation on how wisdom wounds.

An unforgettable journey into Ireland’s darkest past.

A welcome return to form by the master of bittersweet black comedy, dialogue and drama… A profoundly moving, occasionally disturbing and important read.

A profound examination of the stories we tell other people – and ourselves.

Fans of Doyle's previous bestsellers, including The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, will not be disappointed.

Doyle captures the febrile atmosphere of being at school perfectly

A raw, powerful and compelling story

A novel of great humour and creativity

A fitting tribute to a play built on magic and illusion. It’s a celebration of theatre, yes, but just as much a celebration of learning and teaching. Atwood’s spellbinding adaptation is a testament to Shakespeare’s lasting relevance.

Atwood’s novel reflects the play’s multifaceted nature… A fun and imaginative novel.

Atwood unrolls a dazzling remake of The Tempest… Ebullient comedy and keen perceptiveness combine in a bravura fictional tribute to Shakespeare.

A passionately original, heady, often musical modern remix.

I’d love to wake up on Christmas morning with Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed nestled in my stocking.

[A] highlight.

[Hag-Seed is] particularly clever and witty, with layer upon layer of correspondences with the original text waiting to be teased out by readers.

What’s impressive here is not just 77-year-old Atwood’s undimmed brilliance but the sheer effort she puts into the project… An absorbing read but also an erudite examination and explanation of the play’s themes. Not to be missed.

[It] would make an amazing Christmas present.

Atwood brings forth a cast of characters that comfortably inhabit their own world but often burst out of the page in song and rhyme. It is a playful piece of writing, tempered by grief and revenge and the bitterness that can consume, but ultimately this is a book full of the joys of redemption and hope. Wonderful.

Cleverly done… Very complex, like a set of Russian dolls. But it works amazingly well.

Delightfully crazy.

Rich and inventive… The play-within-a-play tripe is audaciously Shakespearean, and so is Atwood’s free-ranging imagination and witty way with language.

Masterful… Clever, funny and tender

She casts The Tempest adrift in a prison and makes a magisterial case for the timeless, classless relevance of Shakespeare’s plays.

I am in awe of Atwood

A real must read