No one better understands the cosmic joke that is humanity. Nor is anyone as funny telling it

One of the funniest books I've read in a long time

Read it: it is hilarious, often wonderfully perceptive, uncompromisingly ambitious and written by a great master of the English language

Moving and humane... I love this novel... It is beautifully achieved, cunningly relaxed, and reveals considerable emotional depth

The best novelist of his generation

Amis writes thrillingly well... [The Pregnant Widow] delivers fantastic enjoyment... It is funny, clever and knowing

Amis is a powerful writer

There is something witty or striking on almost every page

Martin Amis's new novel shows a regathering of his artistic energies

The buzzing sense of fresh, limitless erotic licence is captured brilliantly...he is beginning to write with Old Master assurance on the important subjects... If Amis keeps writing like this about death, he can still prove everyone wrong

The novel’s 200 pages detail the protagonists’ twining internal existences over the course of a farcical 20-minute house-viewing during which they feel they might each have come to experience some form of self-knowledge, or higher knowledge … There aren’t many British writers who have Barker’s sort of courage – to get started on ideas that might appear like trifles, handle them seriously, and produce works that are as close as literature gets to pure play.

I Am Sovereign is bursting with energy, compassion and humour.

Barker is a writer in a class of her own ... A work of coruscating intelligence, of deep humanity.

Barker’s writing is very, very funny, both ha ha and strange ... Fans of Ali Smith’s 'Seasonal Quartet' will enjoy a similarly arch, detached view on the banality of contemporary Britain ... A gloriously audacious blend of, well, the deep and the trite.

Nicola Barker has repeatedly challenged convention. And she is not stopping now.

Ingenious ... Barker spins a series of variations on the theme of selfhood ... Barker serves up a mixture of experiment and statement, part postmodern comedy, part spiritual credo. It takes as it’s raw material the fear and panic, anxiety and suspicion, depression and despair experienced by a man who wants to sell his house, an estate agent trying to help him sell it, the child of the prospective buyer, and, via moments of authorial intrusion and a brilliant confessional finale, the novelist responsible for creating them. The book exhibits Barker’s gifts as a psychologist ... I Am Sovereign places this agonised trio within an elaborate conceptual framework ... Barker isn’t the first writer to use postmodern devices to explore questions about selfhood, but she diverges from most of her predecessors in rejecting the analogy of the self as “fiction” ... [I Am Sovereign] renders the next stage in this remarkable writer’s journey a more than usually enticing prospect.

The novel is not dead when we have writers as curious, daring and honest as Nicola Barker. Her latest is downright exquisite.

A madly brilliant little book … I loved it.

It marks a cautious pivot away from the involutions of H(A)PPY and The Cauliflower, back towards the highly distinctive take on literary realism that characterizes Barker’s earlier work.

Gobbled all of this down all of this 209 page gem on a single long-haul flight. Set in a single 20-minute house viewing in Llandudno with a bafflingly diverse cast of characters. It shouldn’t work but I thought it was super.

Knocked me sideways … It’s so masterful and meta. The narrative style is elegant and frenetic

Simultaneously fabulous and tragic, Swan Song is an incredibly accomplished debut

Our generation’s The Secret History

Triumphant debut…remarkable

A vivid debut … based on ten years of research, this is a dazzling read that’s been worth the wait

Stunning... It’s probably one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever owned

Hypnotically fascinating

The book is dripping with atmosphere and character and is such a pleasure to read.

Pure pleasure

She deftly gives us an insight into their inner lives... while creating defined personalities that resonate and intrigue. Lyrical and fascinating, the fact that this is Greenberg-Jephcott's debut is astounding.

A stunning debut novel that seamlessly blends history, fact and fiction in this imaginative re-telling of the life of novelist Truman Capote

A brilliant first novel

A slick debut pulled off with brio, Swan Song is glamorous, vivid and sometimes even daring in its intelligence

A dazzling read

Greenberg-Jephcott’s debut is fizzing with energy and ideas…The novel has style and substance in spades.

With a grounding in history, it is a fascinating read about the deepest secrets of an iconic author.

Intoxicating

Swan Song is utterly divine.It swept me up and I just couldn't put it down ... it is the writing in this debut novel that astounds most of all. It is vivid, addictive and whips up a terrific portrait of a deeply contradictory and complex man, contrasting scenes from his unorthodox childhood with those from the gilded bubble he ended up in that he lanced through his own actions.

A sumptuous look at the icons of Manhattan's high society scene in the mid-20th century ... An immersive readthat will have you questioning real histories versus the ones we create for ourselves.