The best novel I have read for a long time....The writing is elegant and subtle, and Michelle de Kretser knows how to construct a gripping story ... new and constantly surprising, without being showy or quirky

Reading The Lost Dog one is torn between contradictory urges - to race ahead, in order to find out what happens, and to linger in admiration of de Kretser's ravishing style

Few writers have de Kretser's confident, meticulous plotting, her strong imagination and her precise, evocative prose. The Lost Dog opens up rich vistas... and introduces the reader to a world beyond its fictional frontiers

The Lost Dog showcases a writer as subtly perceptive about feelings as ideas... Behind the troubled affections in this artful, witty but very moving novel, lies the "ghost story" of Australia itself

Kretser's native style is clear, vigorous, sensitive to mood and cadence, and strongly narrative - an excellent tool for a novelist with a story to tell. She does have a story to tell, and a good one

Throughout the book Michelle de Krester's powerful imagination transmits an extraordinary energy to the narrative ... a remarkable achievement

Confident, meticulous plotting, her strong imagination and her precise, evocative prose. Like The Hamilton Case, The Lost Dog opens up rich vistas with its central idea and introduces the reader to a world beyond its fictional frontiers

The Lost Dog is a haunted work, it's characters uneasy ... de Kretser's characterisations are beautifully achieved, with even minor figures vividly realised

Clever, engrossing novel... beautifully shaded

The richness of her prose and the deceptive simplicity of her storytelling make this novel deserving of repeated readings

Scattered throughout are brief dramas or anecdotes, involving a variety of odd and often funny characters

she writes humorously and touchingly about the less portentous garish kitsch and personal clutter that they bring with them

Those childhood ghosts which linger into adulthood are sensitively conjured by Michelle de Kretser... This search for an animal becomes a ravishing search through the fears, hopes and attachments that make us human

Told with subtlety

Rose Tremain is an old-fashioned writer, in the best of ways: we care about her characters' sorrows and hope for their happiness

Tremain allows us to see our country's wonders and failings as if for the first time

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour