Few present-day writers would dare to be so heroically encyclopaedic, such ardent gleaners of gossip and table talk as well as of the profounder reveries of literature, history, science and religion

The great uniting principles that swept mankind along in their current have lost their force, and Huxley's intellectuals find themselves in a maelstrom formed by the new forces of the time. For them, life has become boring, futile, full of ennui. So we get the 'Antic Hay', the dance of profane love, but with the wood-wild strains of Pan broken up into the hesitating rhythms demanded by the fever of modern life. Huxley has a fine sensibility and his wit and fresh vision lend Antic Hay a crystalline quality

Much of Pratchett's appeal lies in his humanism, both in a sentimental regard for his characters' good fortune, and in that his writing is generous-spirited and inclusive

Full of incident, mad, crackling dialogue, attractively appalling characters and some of the funniest and rudest sex scenes I have read since Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint

With razor-sharp dialogue, a powerful odour of ordinary desperation and an incisive understanding of what makes these men's friendship tick, Welsh is at the top of his game

Welsh slams back into form with his sixth book - all brutal sentimentality and bleak, edgy humour... You have a coming-of-age story carved out with a broken bottle

Easily his best book since the one that made his name

I've never felt so attached to characters as I did in that book and have definitely never stayed awake all night sobbing after reading a book, but I did when I read that

The Sea, The Sea is both a novel entirely about the era in which it was written and one that reflects – at an angle – the place and time we are living in… it is a joy to read: a rollicking story that seems endlessly to be building towards some awful, hilarious, frightening conclusion

By the end I was impressed, moved and touched

A bittersweet love story

You'll soon be as captivated by Roza's colourful tale as Chris is

A bitter-sweet story of missed opportunities

Keen-eyed and funny

There is so much truth here, as Tyler strips away the issue of ethnic difference to reach the heart of her complex and compelling matter

Warm and optimistic, this story about adoption raises issues of belonging and identity

Tyler possesses a remarkable ability to render the ordinary extraordinary, which makes reading her work like tucking into tea and cake on a cosy Sunday afternoon

Full of excruciatingly comic set-pieces, this is an immensely satisfying, yet subtle, read

Tenderly observed and lifted by humour, Digging to America is a complex novel that asks if anyone can ever truly fit in. In answering that question Ms Tyler has woven her magic once again

As in her previous books, the writing here makes for wholesome, comforting fare, spiced as always with urbane wit and a knack for nailing the small truths behind fine details

In Digging to America, Tyler exhibits her knack for softening the sharp edges of human contact, showing people with smudges of vulnerability on their faces as they dig toward each other

Her prose is at once unpretentious and elegiac, like a photograph by Dorothea Lange, and her imagery has staying power

Deft and wise prose... [Tyler's] skill at turning everyday occurrences into amazing storytelling gets better and better

Redemptive