Magnificent... a beautiful, feverish account of obsessive love

Featuring lengthy debates between humanist freemasons and Jews-turned-Catholics, a long love-scene written entirely in French and a brilliant hallucinatory journey down the snowy slopes, it merits multiple readings. A novel for a lifetime not just a rainy afternoon

A monumental writer

The greatest German novelist of the 20th century

Mann is Germany's outstanding modern classic, a decadent representative of the tradition of Goethe and Schiller. With his famous irony, he was up there with Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud, holding together the modern world with a love of art and imagination to compensate for the emptiness left by social and religious collapse.

A life-altering book would be The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. It's really thick and German. I like its sensibility, which is unashamedly intellectual.

A masterwork, unlike any other... a delight, comic and profound, a new form of language, a new way of seeing

Comparisons arise with The Waste Land, published two years earlier and also concerned to exhibit the futility of a way of life which had led to the horrors of the First World War. But while T. S. Eliot's poem is a pared-down epic of resonances and allusions, Mann's novel is a full-blown exploration, playing seemingly endless variations on the theme

The most life-changing novel

Beautiful. Rich in perseverance, love and the sweetness of life

A lyrical commentary on war, rivalry, sacrifice, and above all else, loyalty

Timeless. Humanity's foibles and failings are on full display. This soulful debut is a charmer

With a hint of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Tomorrow confronts big questions about life's purpose and celebrates life's pleasures

Damian Dibben's novel is guaranteed to make you shed a tear . . . sure to appeal to readers who enjoy fiction embedded in history

The story of a dog that doesn't die, of the wonders he'd seen, and the horrors, who lost his master a hundred years ago and has been searching for him ever since, Tomorrow is an epic tale of love, of courage, of hope

What a novel! Ambitious and wonderfully achieved. A book to read again and again

Definitely - HIGHLY - worth the read!

Segal’s writing is a joy – funny, wise, and sharply observant... Terrific

By turns tender, brutal, mordantly funny, and heartbreaking, The Awkward Age is preternaturally knowing about fractured families, and young, middle-aged, and elder love. Every sentence is gorgeously, masterfully written. I loved it as I’ve loved no other recent novel. Francesca Segal is a major novelist

A beguiling story about the oceans between family members, generations, and continents and the journeys we make to reach each other on the other side

There are moments in Francesca Segal’s novel when you are so caught up in the characters that you want to shout at them as though they are your own friends… Think rows, sulks, unexpected relationships and sweet romance all dissected with an elegantly forensic precision

Terrific, sharply observed… Segal gets the precarious mother-teenage daughter relationship spot on

Segal’s is a clever, cruel, redemptive, psychologically acute novel that made this reader glad to have been at school just too early for Facebook, selfies and an “online community” baying for news of your latest boyfriend

Thoughtful and beautifully observed

A gripping foray into second families

Thanks to its occasional moments of emotional veracity, The Awkward Age will be praised as a worthy successor to Segal’s debut

Francesca Segal is an accomplished writer. She neatly describes the clash of cultures between the academically rigorous education enjoyed by Nathan and Gwen’s freer, no-holds-barred comprehensive school. There is an engaging and colourful cast of characters… Segal vividly conveys the difficulties faced by imperfectly blended families

This is a warm, funny book dealing with a most modern matter

A brilliant, thoroughly modern family drama from the author of The Innocents

Punchy… Segal tackles her subject with humour and intelligence and a wealth of memorable characters

Exuberant and entertaining… The rest of the narrative then considers how the competing needs and duties of its four main characters can be met, handled and resolved. It does so with brio, insight and empathy, and with carefully modulated comic energy

A compelling story on the complexities that come with a very modern family that we just couldn’t put down

Love, loss, new beginnings and saying goodbye, it's all in here. A moving read

A terrific novel.

[Segal's] descriptions are spare and unerring; everyday family interactions are observed warmly and yet with precision

Evans' writing is like water; her sentences ebb and flow and change course, mirroring the Thames as it wends its way in and around the characters' lives

A masterpiece of modern living

An amazing book full of wisdom and empathy

An immersive look into friendship, parenthood, sex, and grief - as well as the fragility of love. It is told with such detail, you're left wanting more

Beautifully written and observed

Evans is extraordinarily good on the minutiae of grief, family, and the fragility of love

a lyrical portrait of modern London