Cecelia loses her chicklit crown to Sinéad

Sinéad Moriarty can bring readers from hilarity to heartbreak with great deftness

Denis Johnson is one of our most inventive, unpredictable novelists

Johnson knows his people inside out, their lost, lonely, never-had-a-chance lives. He knows how they talk and think, and he makes us know them too

One of the strongest examples of fiction noir since Robert Stone's first work appeared-with an absence of sentimentality and an overall shape that's perfectly judged, this is one of the most impressive first novels of recent seasons - full of a fiery recoiling kick, the dreadful power of inhuman ugliness and misfortune beyond redemption

A must-read novel

Beguiling... An absorbing, entertaining read: one that will see you nicely through a few long dark evenings

An emotionally powerful, highly charged story... a fascinating story with an intriguing premise

Like eavesdropping on a conversation in a bar...This is a really cleverly structured and well-crafted novel

An intriguing drama and romance

This is a harrowing, but gripping love story

Wonderfully enticing.

Individual scenes are often gripping, shocking or moving.

The bloody horrors of conflict are captured with visceral aplomb in this fine, minimalist novel.

Some of the most vividly evoked battle scenes I've read – he doesn't shy away from taking risks … chilling and touching all at the same time.

Foulds has the literary intelligence to turn the commonplace on its head.

A high-class thriller … Foulds has a literary novelist's feel for [Sicily's] harsh beauty.

Foulds’ prose is superb… It reads like Catch-22 written by Evelyn Waugh.

It’s an ambitious book and the writer relates his story with poetic precision

Told in a language that is both lyrical and stark The Tusk that Did the Damage should win Tania James praise and laurels from those readers who long for a more penetrating look at environmental issues and the moral questions which accompany them’.