'As is typical of the best classics, he has fashioned a universal tale of sexual obsession, love and death out of a particular life'

'Even in its sexiest moments, it never loses its intellectual poise. Dry witticisms intersperse sweaty couplings...The Folding Star is a novel of considerable breadth.What gives it its depth is the candour, wit, sensuous immediacy and melancholy intelligence applied to it'

'Few writers' prose can throw a party as easily as retire to the library as Hollinghurst's...[He ] is on as fine a form in this novel as his first'

'Grand 19th-century fin-de-siècle lusciousness, a seamy 20th-century carnality and a generous pinch of true wit'

Brilliantly paced, sexy and hilarious... An awesome bebut... I can't wait for his second novel

Fresh, funny and convincing

Angry, moving, urgent

One of my favourite books of the year...This is going to be huge...I loved it

An enjoyably bumptious coming of age novel

Tolerant, funny and real, [the narrator] ducks and dives hedonistically, lazily, gunning out x-ray observations about masculinity, models and "the magic of miscegenation" that would have had Oscar Wilde licking his lips

'Highly coloured, linguistically inventive...Evans has a powerful and often beguiling imagination'

'Sensual and poetic, as well as powerful and uncompromising...A mature, compelling and beautiful first novel'

'The writing is both mature and freshly perceptive, creating not only a warmly funny novel of a Neasden childhood - with its engaging minutiae of flapjacks and icepops, lip gloss and daisy hairclips - but a haunting account of the loss of innocence and mental disintegration.'