Secrets, tragedy, hidden pasts and family secrets all set in glorious Provence - I loved this

A lovely book packed with the sunshine, scents and savours of the South of France. Plenty of page-turning drama but also mouthwatering descriptions of Paris and Provence. Enough to make you rush straight to the Eurostar

Gripping

This atmospheric read will whisk you straight to the South of France as you become immersed in the tale of secrets and heartbreak.

A wonderful story full of family drama and mystery. Beautiful and rich writing, wonderful nature, and loads of secrets and intrigue - this book has it all

I loved this book. I kept snatching a few more pages whenever I could. It has left me wanting to head to warmer climes and take part in the grape and olive harvests. Well I can dream can't I?

Carol will take you away as you become immersed in the unusual life of the Cambon family, where no one is quite who they first seemed to be

Her beautifully written prose propels the reader into a sensory haven of fragrant olive groves, rattling cicadas and bejewelled dragonflies . . . Carol Drinkwater is an incredibly talented writer, with a real skill for weaving an engaging story

The Forgotten Summer is literary, well researched and hugely satisfying to read. It explores not just love, but searing grief, hatred, deceit, joy and despair, providing a richness of experience for the reader . . . wonderfully atmospheric writing

A beautiful, atmospheric story of loss, family drama and mystery'

An absolutely outstanding book which I couldn't put down until I finished at 4.30 a.m. Look no further for an intelligently written book with twists and turns I hadn't seen coming. Epically excellent. 5*

Emotional and Absorbing - get Lost in a Beautiful Book

It will keep you philosophically and morally on the edge of your seat throughout.

[It] is pleasingly baffling, suggesting hidden depths and multiple layers without ever quite revealing them.

What stands out, and stays with you, is the fable-like aura which makes this feel like a children’s book for adults.

Coetzee doesn’t want to be understood, or explained. He wants, merely, to be read. The Schooldays of Jesus is, indeed, very readable.

The prose is limpid, the plot simple, the style hypnotic, but what it all means I wouldn’t like to say.

His most intriguing book since [On Chesil Beach].

[Nutshell] in parts is the best of his oeuvre…since Enduring Love… There is a visceral edge and an eldritch stickiness to some of the prose.

McEwan is the nearest thing we have to a “state of (much of) the nation” novelist. He does commentary with a crisp verve.

Nutshell was…a pleasure to read… [It’s] very funny.

McEwan, whose prose is always exquisite, is best known for Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday. His Nutshell is a stunt, but a gorgeous one, studded with Joycean reflections on fathers, the wisdom of pop songs and reviews of placenta-filtered fine wine.

Perhaps you’ve got to read it to believe it? That’s certainly what I urge. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Nutshell features the novelist at his best, combining the unsettling morbidity of his early works with the wit and depth of his later publications… It is comforting to know too that McEwan, one of the great writers of his generation, part of the defining clique of his time, continues to carve his talents into jewels 40 years on.

[McEwan] spins this gripping yarn in his usual sublime prose, sprinkled with the blackest of comic relief… The only criticism one could level at this slender beauty is that it’s over all too soon.

This, McEwan’s fourteenth novel, proves once again that he is a writer finely attuned to how the heart beats. He knows how to make his reader feel entertained, happy, and sad, all within twenty pages – an expert in the craft of the sad smile, so to speak… Be assured – you don’t have to be a fan of the play to read this novel; it is a pleasure in its own right.

It has a great concept and a brilliant opening… I love the way the wisecracking narrator…picks up information about the world… It shows what can be done with the form, that there are still new ways to experiment.

Possibly the most unusual crime book of the year. A witty and suspenseful story told from inside a mother's womb.

It's an intriguing set-up, and one that allows McEwan to do what he's good at. The crime is deftly charted, expertly paced. Much of the writing is lean and queasily vivid.

McEwan is even more brilliant when turning his pen to wry humour and satire… An intelligent social satire.

A classic tale of murder and deceit.

[It’s] incredibly brave and only one of our greatest authors could pull it off. He does, with aplomb. The sheer command of language and confidence with prose is a tutorial for us lesser authors.

This dark, clever tale is among the best of McEwan’s newer novels.

[Nutshell is] hilarious and compelling… [A] ripping, gripping yarn – narrative velcro.

McEwan is on top form… Social satire that wears its learning lightly

[A] brilliant novel… A tour de force in language and literary intrigue.

A book pulsing with hilarious and brainy brio… He simultaneously spoofs crime fiction and finds a novel mouthpiece for a mordantly entertaining and exhilaratingly intelligent commentary on the modern world.

A comic tale… It is a masterpiece.

[A] wonderful new novel.

By turns, funny, shocking and compelling. But the writing is so clever and beautiful. I could read it again and again.

The voice of its narrator, a foetus, is splendidly sardonic.

Not only does he pull it off, he does so triumphantly, in the cleverest book I’ve read this year. It’s smart, dark and at times very funny.

A saucy, claustrophobic and darkly funny story which is all rather peculiar. Compulsive reading.

I devoured Ian McEwan’s latest very funny spin on Hamlet.

An ingenious rewrite of Hamlet as a murder story in which a foetus is detective and possible victim.

This is McEwan at his most playfully provocative.

A clever conceit, elegantly wrought, economically constructed.

A bewitching ode to humanity’s beauty, longing and selfishness.

A gripping piece of fiction.

I was hooked from the first page.

[A] smart, eloquent novel.

A enthralling read from one of the world’s master storytellers.

McEwan delights with lyrical prose that is fittingly poetic.

[A] work which both fascinates and disturbs through its unique perspective on a malicious death… Every sentence is a joy to behold, a gift to the reader of delicately considered prose, and thoughtful observations… Alongside its edgy and entertaining narration, and perhaps in part because of it, the novel manages to challenge all preconceptions of the crime genre, upending the whodunit into an extraordinary will-they-do-it… By nature, Nutshell is a novel which perplexes, entertains, and moves the reader in equal turn, all with McEwan’s startling attention to detail, and luxuriant prose style. Read it for its peculiar narrator, read it for the rapidly-changing and intense emotions, or read it just for the thrill of chase as the killing comes to fruition; whatever intrigues you about this novel, just make sure that you do read it – and feel the thrill for yourself.

Brilliantly realised… Any book so bound up in a conceit and in its own verbal fireworks at times runs the risk of being a bit clever-clever. But on the whole we accept in a suspension of disbelief the foetus’s pompous mastery of language and imagery and abandon ourselves to the sheer eloquent pleasure of this hilarious romp.

Short, odd but pleasurable… Great fun, and very well written.

Rich in Shakespearean allusion, this is McEwan on dazzling form.

Told from a perspective unlike any other, Nutshell is a classic tale of murder and deceit from one of the world’s master storytellers.

Ian McEwan’s brilliance as a stylist and surprise plotter finds a fitting subject in Nutshell…, which is Hamlet as told from inside the womb. Up there with his best.

A gripping tale is told with breathtaking skill, turbocharged with rage against the madness and despair of our modern world.

Nutshell is one of those books you sit down to read and don’t get up until you’ve finished. It is brilliantly executed and full of surprises; original, clever and witty. Simply a must-read

A book I couldn’t put down… brilliantly clever