Lawrence is the most Dostoevskian of English novelists, in whose best work conflicting ideological positions are brought into play and set up against each other in dialogue that is never simply or finally resolved

No writer since Lawrence has been so openly governed by what seems like powerful personal likes and dislikes, grievances, and by what appear to many as untenable prejudices

What astonished me reading it this time round is the iconoclastic modernity of the novel... the sense of daring experiment.. I had entirely forgotten what drastic steps Lawrence was taking with character, for instance. Or with narrative (the novel proceeds cyclically). When this is combined with sexual overtness and a revolutionary call for the individual to achieve "Me-ness" in opposition to the nation, industry and war, we have a book that, appearing as it did in 1915, seemed genuinely disturbing

As a reader, you find his prose wrapping itself, wraith-like, round your imagination, casting a baffling and indefinable spell.it works triumphantly well. The fact that W.G. Sebald chooses to tease, dazzle and mystify should not blind us to the fact that he does the one thing that every novelist should do: he entertains, provokes, stimulates and inspires

You read Clara and you catch the music of another mind, and wherever it comes from Janice Galloway plays the notes to what sounds very much like perfection. This is a virtuoso performance

A novel dizzy with lyrical passages and pulsating with the musical passion of Clara's complicated, tragic love for her husband Robert Schumann

Her limpid prose style is so seductive and so beautiful a fine meditation on art, love and loss...

Immensely readable, a grand American novel

Seizes readers by the lapels with a story that feels serious and mysterious ... He has teased ordinary circumstances into something extraordinary, which is exactly what we want our fiction writers to do

Ferris writes hauntingly on the fragility of our minds and on the compulsions that drive us, despite our best intentions

Brave and masterful. A writer of the first order

An accomplished and daring work

Faulks's most vivid character is the odious John Veals, a hedge-fund manager, who relishes all the money that he makes and the power that he quietly exerts... Veals is brilliantly insidious... A thoughtful page-turner... The handsome sunset is heavily, and rightly, weighed down by dark clouds

A tragedy at sea, a miracle on paper... Moore offers us, elegantly, exultantly, the very consciousness of her characters. In this way, she does more than make us feel for them. She makes us feel what they feel, which is the point of literature and maybe even the point of being human.

This mesmerising book is full of tears, and is a graceful meditation on how to survive life's losses

Fans of Anita Shreve and Anne Enright will love this

The gentle, meandering pace of this exquisitely expresses the agony of grief and the confusions and complexities of parental love

Moore's portrayal of loss is remarkably real

Profoundly moving, beautifully written book

A marvellous book

A perfectly pitched novel that captures its characters and their dilemmas.

Lose yourself in a fantastical gastronomical journey ... This novel explores familial love in an unexpected way, and you'll be hooked from the first taste

This emotional and moving tale blew us away with its beauty

It's as beautiful as it is strange. Bender writes such lyrical sentences, you pause over them in wonder. She has an unusual take on life; and makes even the ordinary extraordinary. It's a compulsive page turner. This book is already a best seller in America, and has been embraced by book clubs. I loved it. It's one of those books you don't want to finish - and even when you have - it stays in your mind. Bender has written three previous novels. I intend to savour them all

This novel, in the style of stories like Chocolat, is a dreamy feast of gorgeous writing ... Gently, beautiful, odd, this is a story to sip and savour

An intriguing premise for an original novel about a family and its relationships

Moving and highly original, this book will make you look at food in a whole new light