A beautiful study of familial need and mess, in which the universal and the particular play footsie with each other. Deft, artful, but above all insightful till it hurts, this is Khemiri’s best yet.

A bold and remarkable novel - a marvel of form and imagination that is also miraculously full of heart and compassion.

Absent fathers, wayward children, generational strife and the sheer fatigue of new parenthood... Khemiri's prose has a zing and bite stylishly served by Alice Menzies's pacy, idiomatic translation...The Family Clause [has] an epic, as well as a comic, buoyancy.

The dynamics of each relationship are superbly complex, and Khemiri's wry, comic touch gives a lightness to the inevitability as the children follow in their father's footsteps.

Excellent... Exquisitely translated by Alice Menzies... What Khemiri achieves is not just an engrossing narrative but the complex portrait of a family that is both identifiable and distinctive, normal and strange.

An exceptionally well-constructed novel.

Satisfying . . . Khemiri succeeds at creating an infectious sense of melancholia as the poisonous patriarch is forced to reckon with the truth. In a slow build of quotidian moments, Khemiri constructs a familiarly flawed universe that lays bare what it means to be human.

The Family Clause vibrates with rueful humour and quiet wisdom. The more you get to know the characters contained within it, the more you see how tremendously large Jonas Hassen Khemiri's heart must be. His redemptive vision is rare and needed in these dark times.

I was drawn into this fascinating story right from the beginning and couldn't let loose for days after I had put down The Family Clause. And now, some weeks later, I know I will never forget the grandfather, the son who is a father, the sister, or the girlfriend. They are here to stay in my mind, like those other fictional characters you never meet in real life, but who you would recognize on the street the minute you saw them. Their personalities are far from perfect, but because of that, you love them all the more for who they are.

Behold the great innovator of Swedish literature, with a unique ability to fill his prose with energy and vigour.

Smart and simple, with greatness hidden in the detail, in the patterns of human behaviour that are exposed, The Family Clause is Khemiri’s best novel yet.

A rich tale, characterised by moments of real pain and flowing, beautiful language... a writer who should not be missed.

Khemiri devises a portrait that looks into the darkest recesses of family life, and he does so with great compassion. Our daily travails and subtle humiliations are revealed to us in both quiet tragedy and farcical comedy. These are the parents we never wanted to be and probably all - in one way or another - ended up becoming. Seeing ourselves so clearly makes this compulsively readable.

A great deal of recognition and a great deal of humour. I laughed often and wholeheartedly.

A subtle uprising, an understated process of liberation and a tender defence of the trials of attempting to hold a family together... It is full of empathy and subtle humour.

Jonas Hassen Khemiri steps on the gas as he portrays the stresses and betrayals of life with young children. In his new novel, the recognition factor is a source of both laughter and discomfort.

A tender, shimmering novel that moves effortlessly yet reaches so far, that covers betrayal, loyalty and unwritten rules... it is a pure vitamin shot for its readers.

Like all great Gothic works, Luckenbooth deals in duality: good/evil, light/dark ... Fagan comes at Edinburgh like a voracious lover, eager to explore both its conspicuous beauty and its secret places ... Fagan's writing sparkles most when she is describing landscape ... Luckenbooth is a horror story, originally and beautifully told.

[Fagan's] sinuous, supernatural story unwinds down nine decades ... Her narrative weaves between the real and the spirit world.

Luckenbooth is a compulsive study of our entanglement with place and each other. Brimming with character, subversion and decadence, Fagan builds a striking portrait of the Scottish city's deep-seated repression and toxicity and the grand strength of its inhabitants as they push the city into a modern age. An exhilarating, courageous story of the need to expose the evils of our communal past, Luckenbooth is nothing short of a masterpiece.

An exuberant, raucous book.

Brilliantly strange ... From the start, Luckenbooth gives the feel of a legend or fairy story ... Time periods slip about, gleefully penetrating one another. A multistorey horror story reveals itself obliquely in fragments across a number of years and viewpoints, weirdly paced, the action rushed and breathless, generalised, then freezing for a moment on an unexpected scene or event ... Everyone in the novel is a chimera of one sort or another, caught between forms, illuminated from inside by the light of their own unkempt ideas and desires ... Fagan's booth of stories - her Cornell box of frenzies, tragedies and delights - offers the present moment in the endless war between love and capital. It's brilliant.

Masterly ... A lesser writer would struggle to control this cacophony of voices but what marks out Luckenbooth is the fierce intelligence driving Fagan's tale ... This is a mad god's dream of a book - it deserves to be shortlisted for every prize going this year.

Impossible to adequately describe this extraordinarily inventive novel. You'll just have to read it yourself. Early days, I know, but suffice to say this one's already heading for my books of the year list together with both my Women's Prize for Fiction and Booker Prize wish lists.

One of the hottest titles right now, Jennie Fagan's Luckenbooth has won all round acclaim.

The novel unfolds like a set of dark short stories, with a different character narrating or guiding each one. But there's a twist: Luckenbooth is not just haunted by the realities of time and history, but also by the strong musk of the gothic imagination ... Thickly worked and carefully assembled, the novel functions as a claustrophobic chiller and as a testament to lives led beyond the margins and in the shadows.

Luckenbooth ... is littered with lines like this. The sort of lines that demand to be read and reread: splendid in isolation, electric in combination. Fagan writes with drama. She can pick out the fine detail, in neat brush strokes, no doubt, but it is in drawing her arm back and attacking a story with great, sweeping lyricism that she propels Luckenbooth forward, dragging the reader through the 20th century, as experienced by a compelling cast of characters.

Slips and slides through layers of history, tears in the fabric of time and a series of strange shape shifting characters - it's a wonderful work that is a trip into a spectral interzone but also staged in a warped reality - great writing and a major talent.

A novel for readers with sophisticated tastes.

Uniquely gripping visions of the hidden social, economic and spiritual forces at play in 20th-century Edinburgh.

Dazzlingly ambitious.

As sexy and horrifying as any fairy story, it is a book concerned, not only with a structure, but with structures: alphabetical, architectural, societal, what they are built upon and how they crumble

Prize-winning author Jenni Fagan does not disappoint with her latest novel, Luckenbooth, which is easily her most compelling yet. In her usual poetic style, Fagan tells of a nine-storey Edinburgh tenement just off the Royal Mile that is creaking with secrets. Throughout this haunting novel, characters' secrets and memories live on in the howling gales of the spirit world, desperate to re-enter their lives. The narrative takes us through eight decades - from 1910 to 1999 - working its way up all nine floors of the building in hopscotch fashion, allowing for an intriguing interpretation of 20th-century life in the capital. Prepare to be transported into a Fagan's weird and wonderful imagination. It is a whirlwind read and one that I could not put down until the final page had turned.

As sexy and horrifying as any fairy story, it is a book concerned, not only with a structure, but with structures: alphabetical, architectural, societal, what they are built upon and how they crumble.

An Edinburgh tenement building is haunted by tall stories and unnerving strangers, from William Burroughs to the devil's daughter, in this weird and wonderful gothic confection.

Her "world building" is highly effective, and each character fully inhabits their decade. Fagan's writing is anchored in societal issues, the wrongs done and the ways individuals have challenged those wrongs and asserted their individuality and sexuality in ways that might make them seem misfits, outcasts. Fagan certainly pulls no punches and is determined that these passionate, authentic stories should not be confined to the periphery.

A deliciously weird gothic horror

An ambitious and ravishing novel that will haunt me long after

Ambitious in scope… The physical atmosphere of the Bass Rock and its surroundings are wonderfully evoked… But it is the relationships between women in this tessellated work that triumph... I wholly recommend this book.

Wyld is often praised for her lyrical prose, and The Bass Rock is most certainly a continuation of this form.

[A] dark, beautiful and funny gothic family saga for the #MeToo generation… an atmospheric book that transports you within a few sentences… The tension is always building as the story takes on an otherworldly dimension.

The Bass Rock is complex, rich, challenging… Like David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, The Bass Rock offers a universal history of subjugation and oppression… Violence…runs through the book like veins in marble… Vivid and gripping.

A gripping look at three women's stories across four centuries.

Evie Wyld’s passion for horror shines through in the setting of this novel.

Utterly enthralling… [Wyld’s] eye for human foibles and idiosyncrasy is incredibly sharp, and this novel once again exhibits her bravura way with narrative structure… Dark, disturbing and very sophisticated.

[An] intensely absorbing gothic novel, which weaves together the fate of three women across three centuries. That it can also comfortably accommodate episodes of off-the-wall, Fleabag-esque hilarity confirms the acclaimed Wyld's brilliance.

Wyld's thought-provoking plots separate this book from many others on the shelves... Wyld's three narratives are artfully crafted to suit the shifting time frames.

Wyld's ingeniously linked narratives weave a haunting tale of fear and defiance.

A novel of such subtlety and hope