Her style is brilliantly heartless, and cork-dry; original herself, she is a witty examiner of human and cultural eccentricity. She is, above all, playful… What grounds all DeWitt’s brilliance and game-playing is the way that she dramatizes a certain kind of hyperintelligent rationalism and probes its irregular distribution of blindness and insight…a wonderfully funny book, but comedy dances near the abyss; the apprehension of humor’s frailty links DeWitt to the tragicomic tradition of Cervantes, Sterne, and Nabokov

Fiercely intelligent, very funny and unlike anything else I’ve ever read

A triumph – a genuinely new story, a genuinely new form

A bold, brilliant book…original both in content and form… DeWitt’s zeal cannot fail to enchant

An exhilaratingly literate and playful first novel by a fresh, electrifying talent. DeWitt goes to the top of the class...her adventurousness spins out on an epic scale

A brilliant debut novel...keeps things moving at an exhilarating clip... DeWitt is formidably intelligent but engagingly witty

Destined to become a classic

The Last Samurai is an original work of brilliance about, in part, the limits of brilliance. And in literature as in life, DeWitt understands that what we like most of all is a good yarn

You walk into a book due to an Akira Kurosawa link and your fondness for the great film-maker. You walk out, staggered by the book's originality and bravery... It should be read by everyone

I adored this crazy, fabulous, lovable book… This really does deserve to be a modern classic

A brilliant and sad book… The funniest book I’ve read in years.

Helen DeWitt is a real find – I loved this book

It is exciting for the future of the novel that a writer can do all the basic things readers need – from Peter Pan to the Odyssey, from Bleak House to The Crying of Lot 49 – and do something new with the form of the tale itself

A delightful and original novel – expansive and intelligent writing

DeWitt pushes against the limitations of the novel as a form; reading her, one wants to push against the limitations of one’s own brain

An original, daring novel, The Last Samurai could well become a classic – accessible and as unremittingly entertaining to the casual reader as it is rewarding to those who would delve further

A tremendous novel. DeWitt is one of the most interesting writers working in the English language today

A singular masterpiece

The Last Samurai is a book everyone should be talking about

De Witt has intelligence, wit and unusual stylistic bravery

An ambitious, colossal debut novel

DeWitt pushes enjoyably but firmly against (and sometimes beyond) the unknown capabilities of the reader

Ryan has the ability to shatter your heart into a million pieces with every book he writes - and even have you welcome the pain.

An example of masterful storytelling

With each novel Ryan gets better, and this moving and quietly insistent work is his best yet.

You can sense his compassion in the bones of his work

Devastating and masterful

A hugely affecting, moving read. I was heartbroken by the end, but adored every chapter

Beautiful

Each section displays Ryan’s range as a writer... [he] writes with brilliant empathy.

Exquisitely rendered, with raw anguish sublimated into lyrical prose.

Heartbreaking … Arguably the best of the new wave of Irish writers to have emerged over the last decade

Ryan has the gift of ventriloquism - he inhabits his fictional creations thoroughly, enveloping you in their worlds

Sublime

From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan made me laugh and cry and forced me to look strangers in the eye

Beautifully bleak and characterised by his remarkable ability to write about grief and common humanities.

Beautiful, compassionate

Superlatives wouldn’t do for describing From a Low and Quiet Sea … understated, and gloriously heart rendering

Strout turns her clear, incisive gaze on the intricacies and betrayals of small town life

Anything is Possible is predictably great because it's written by Elizabeth Strout, and brilliantly unpredictable - because it is written by Elizabeth Strout