Remarkable... In terms of sheer lyrical force it stands head and shoulders above most debuts

I was blown away by Fire Rush - an exceptional and stunningly original novel by a major new writer... Her mesmerising, imaginative and incantatory writing leaves us swaying to the bass of the visceral rhythms she so powerfully describes. By the end of the novel, I felt charged and changed and already longed to reread it

Few have channelled so well the skittering beats and transcendent air of dub music as Crooks does in her semi-autobiographical debut... Startlingly vivid reading

A heady swirl of a novel that pulls the reader in from the first page... A fabulous, absorbing read

A window into the dub scene at the time, with rhythmic, lyrical writing and a story about raving, love and the impact of police violence... Both a page turner and a literary novel... Truly remarkable

A hypnotic journey into the dub reggae scene

This beautiful, sprawling narrative is wrought with an incredible precision and a musicality which carries every sentence. Crooks' novel haunts but make space for hope as well

A colourful, immersive debut... Throughout, a passion and anger resound as we gain a glimpse into a rarely observed British subculture

A brilliant, exuberant novel. Full of beauty, musicality and feminist power

A scorching, lyrical debut, soaked in dub reggae

A rich and rhythmic story... Fire Rush is a startlingly good debut

A wonderfully literary, musical and original novel about a culture and era that rarely makes the pages of fiction… Crooks writes with depth and maturity

Ambitious, atmospheric... This is a full-blooded novel of passion and anger with a deep, bassy resonance

Fire Rush is a lyrical debut powered by uncompromising political force

A startling debut novel... Jacqueline Crooks has crafted a richly textured world... She succeeds with great aplomb

Penetrates a subculture that we are unused to seeing represented in British fiction, depicting it in all its messy, exuberant complexity

Fire Rush is a book with the power to fill and break your heart... One of the strongest debuts of the year

An eye-opening, jaw-dropping story

An immersive debut... This is a triumph

Jacqueline Crooks' lyrical debut dances to the rhythm of the reggae music that pulses throughout it, in a powerful portrait of black womanhood

Incantatory

Gripping, unexpected and beautiful

Wears its philosophical intentions on its sleeve; well-developed characters and their interesting careers seal the deal.

The wisdom and beauty in these seamlessly-braided narratives form a singular emotional experience for the reader that is both immediate and everlasting.

A beautiful exploration of the connections between two families and the reverberations from a teenager's lie...Shapiro imagines in luminous prose how each of the characters' lives might have gone if things had turned out differently...an intriguing meditation

Shapiro writes with compassion and a deep understanding of the damage that secrets wreak

Shapiro returns...with a beautiful exploration of the connections between two families and the reverberations from a teenager's lie... Shapiro imagines in luminous prose how each of the characters' lives might have gone if things had turned out differently. It's an intriguing meditation.

Shapiro delivers keen perceptions about family dynamics via fictional characters that exude a rare combination of substance and delicacy. Stunning in depth and breadth, this luminous examination of loss and acceptance, furtiveness and reliability, abandonment and friendship ultimately blazes with profound revelations

Gorgeous

Lyrical and sharp

Signal Fires is an exquisite portrait of two families, and a testament to the human capacity to experience love and loss. With wry tenderness it shows how we are all connected through time in ways that are at once beautiful, mysterious, profound and full of hope.

A master of conversation [Anne Tyler] depicts the intimacies and irritations of family life, the exchanged, complicit lances and misunderstandings. Read this

One of the finest novelists of modern times

Glorious

A new Anne Tyler novel is always a cause for celebration... effortlessly enthralling

One of America's literary giants

A quiet sense of emotional tragedy, sharp observational humour and writing so economically precise you long to read every sentence twice

Anne Tyler’s twentieth novel has all the hallmarks of the well-loved author’s best work – wonderful observation, intricate detail, nuanced humour and, of course, a family whose shared stories and secrets define them

This is [Anne Tyler’s] best in years

Love may be many splendoured but, in this novel, we also see its smothering, suffocating side, as well as its tyrannous sway – and only a writer of Tyler’s skill could transform that into such an undiluted delight

The worlds she creates are so absorbing and believable; she taps into our innate curiosity about people just like ourselves

What she does, in the course of this novel, is show that the simplest family stories often have complex roots and unlikely outcomes. This is a book full of surprises, and Tyler is adept at the great revelation that both startles and throws what has come before into a whole new light

A stunning novel about family life which just rings so true – it depicts the bonds and the tensions, the love and the exasperation beautifully

A warm, wise and funny book

A believable and wise read

The texture of everyday experience transmuted into art

[A] wonderful book

There is no limit to the superlatives that Tyler inspires

With A Spool of Blue Thread, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist is on typically fine form

‘[Tyler’s] latest book…is as effortlessly enthralling on the familial front as her previous 19

Sincerely and carefully told

This is a book that explores moral and psychological ambiguities with extraordinary subtlety

A Spool of Blue Thread does an exquisite job

The real triumph here is [Tyler’s] portrayal of old age – droll, and desperately sad.

This novel…has lavish strengths

Love…is relayed with extraordinary skill by Tyler

It’s Tyler at her witty, truthful best

Tyler takes the minute details of everyday life…and makes them remarkable

This is a novel to cherish

Wonderful new novel

I loved this book and knew I would as soon as I saw the author’s name… I shall read this book many times

Tyler…writes movingly of the early stages of dementia and its fierce denial

A truly delightful read

[Anne Tyler’s] usual pithy observations on life and strong storytelling combine beautifully

You close the book feeling you’ve been privy to a family that is quite extraordinary

Ms. Tyler has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving

It takes organized wit to write about human muddle as Tyler does, without once losing our attention or the narrative’s spool of blue thread

A moving, well-crafted reflection on life and death and the relationships that sustain us through both

How can it be so wonderful!... Tyler remains among the best chroniclers of family life

Astonishingly adept

Tyler describes so accurately the frailties, turmoil and love of family life

No one does family sagas quite like Anne Tyler

Mundane yet magical, thus pure Tyler

Anne Tyler paints a large-scale portrait on a small-scale canvas and does it beautifully

In many ways this novel is a culmination of all those that have gone before it; it combines a multitude of themes and never fails to exact humour alongside the more sombre task of delving into topical issues such as sexuality, relationships and ageing

Absolutely wonderful, a work of genius

It's so rich in detail and reality, so simple, but so compelling. I wept

Engaging, compassionate, insightful… Tyler's strengths here are on the detail and the mundane. She gently weaves a rich tapestry of family life with a generosity of spirit that never a spills into sentimentality’

Tyler’s skill lies in making the utterly everyday something special

This novel was an absolute joy as a personal read and whilst there are surely many spools of thread (sorry!) to unpick in reading group discussion, I can’t help but feel that readers will find the greatest enjoyment with this book in the quiet, personal introspection of their own experience of it

Is as good as anything she has ever written

Another insightful study of family life. It may be familiar territory for the writer, but she commands it absolutely

One to read on a family holiday

Tyler at her best… Like all Tyler’s work, this book is hard to put down, often laugh out loud funny and every word rings true: reading it requires no effort at all and yet the rewards are endless

Tyler’s ability to combine carefully chosen characters, an open writing style and universally relatable themes makes her work so popular and…timeless. No wonder everyone is celebrating her 50-year career, to which I can only add my wholehearted recommendation of this novel with a full five stars out of five

She gives us a better sense than anyone else of what it’s like to be part of a family

Her gift for producing what seems less like fiction than actuality works wonders

Heartwarming

beautifully written… a really good family saga

Anne Tyler has the power to make the most ordinary observations enthralling
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Highly reccommended

Her extraordinary gift for producing what seems less like fiction than actuality works wonders again… magnificent.

May be her best yet, though, to be honest, this is what I always tend to say after reading the latest Anne Tyler.

Superbly accomplished, perceptive and funny, tugged forward by suspended revelations to its hurricane climax

Tyler has captured the characters of an “ordinary” family brilliantly

[Tyler] writes so sparingly and yet her books are dense with the complexities of human emotions

Pure pleasure

[Tyler] has the rapier wit of a true satirist

Tyler’s gift for producing what seems less like fiction than absorbing actuality is everywhere in evidence as characters all but elbow their way off the page with lifelikeness. Beneath the surface darker depths are discernible, and awareness of human transience generates comedy and melancholy. Atmospherically rendered, the passage of time has both entertaining and heart-rendering results. She has never written with more finesse, vitality and acuteness

Somehow what’s familiar seems transcended in this wonderful novel, infused with freshness and surprise

Anyone after a good novel will find themselves endlessly delighted by Anne Tyler’s miraculously deft and touching family saga

Reminded us that Anne Tyler… can write a barbed family saga that puts younger imitators to shame

Funny and brutally frank in its portrayal in an averagely messy family and the degree to which accident contributed to the formation of its history…Tyler…Is a master technician

Anne Tyler is a magician: what she does seems so simple and et it weaves a compelling spell

Utterly absorbing, heartbreaking and endearing

Tyler explores the simmering resentment that often underpins familial relationships, as well as the elusive nature of the American Dream

The characters in Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread are s fully formed I felt I was reading a family album. There is poetry in the way Tyler writes about mundane family life. When the book ended, I felt alone

A book that is shot through with random misfortune, but which takes infinite pleasure in the detail of everyday family life.

Rivalries flare between siblings and secrets unravel, as Tyler shines a brilliant light on our fundamental relationships and the span of life.

Since the characters are actual, flawed human beings, it makes the story unbelievably relatable.

One of the greatest storytellers alive, whose characters arrive on the page like human beings, things happen to them, they react to these things, and then life continues

A Spool of Blue Thread…adroitly shines a light on sibling rivalry, family secrets and the wounding power of grief… [and] demonstrates again her gift for comic detail

A stunning novel about three generations of a family that perfectly captures the fights, petty irritations and deep connections between them