The River King is proof that [Alice Hoffman] just gets better and better

Alice Hoffman is simply brilliant

The language rewards, as the story engrosses

Shrewd, intelligent, kindly and humane

It can be hard to find an example of good old-fashioned storytelling these days, but storytelling, refreshingly, is Alice Hoffman's strength

Compelling and daring...a spellbinding and captivating novel

With Anne Tyler, Alice Hoffman is queen of the 'burbs and an authority on American, small town weirdness. The River King is proof that she just gets better and better

Haunting

A rich, layered story

A mesmeric tale that lingers long after the final page is turned

The River King is the George Clooney of summer reading: holidaying women, this is the novel to pack

One of Myerson's strength's lies in creating atmosphere... Myerson sees the pathos in small details.

[The narrator] is engagingly drawn by Fagan, who has created a character possessed of intellectual curiosity and individual quirks…Written with great verve…Fagan has a clear voice, an unflinching feel for the complexity of the teenage mindset, and an awareness of the burden we impose on children…What’s intriguing here – particularly in a Scottish fiction landscape that can display too much of the plodding everyday – is her effort to lift the story of teen misadventure into a heightened realm of intellectual aspiration and quasi-sci-fi notions of sinister social change.

Fagan is writing about important stuff: the losers, the lonely, most of them women…[Anais] maintains a cool, smart, pretty, witty and wise persona.

one of the most revelatory debut novels from a Scottish author in some time.

punchy and startlingly accomplished

Fagan’s writing is astonishing... On the strength of this book, Fagan more than deserves her place on the recent Granta list of young British novelists. She’s a major talent whose work should be widely recognised. The Panopticon is a weird, gorgeous, utterly unplaceable work of fiction that’s hilarious, uplifting, dirty and real. I fell in love with it from the first page and then struggled for weeks to put my feelings about it into words.

Fagan’s novel peers into the world inhabited by forgotten children, and, in Anais, gives us a heartbreakingly intelligent and sensitive heroine wrapped in an impossibly impenetrable exterior. Readers won’t be able to tear themselves away from this transcendent debut.

this book is as warm as it is bone-chilling… This amazing book manages to be both a condemnation of all that is wrong in our society and the care system in particular, and a wonderful testament to a person’s will to live a better life, all at the same time. It is no surprise that Jenni Fagan was included in Granta’s list of twenty most promising British authors under the age of 40. If she can bring her clear voice and wonderful storytelling skills to future books, Jenni Fagan is one writer we will be hearing a lot more about in years to come.

If you're asking which book I most admire I would say The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan. A true literary masterpiece. The story of a girl in care with wild dreams. Funny, heartbreaking, heart-expanding, everything.

A thrilling follow-up to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island...Silver is a novel that will appeal to readers of all ages. Beautifully written and genuinely exciting...Best of all, Motion’s novel stays true to Stevenson’s original tale while adding an extra dimension.

Elegant, thrilling sequel...The plot is gripping, a mixture of high adventure, low cunning and desperation...Motion’s prose vivid and glowingly poetic, is a brilliant counterpoint to the fascinating action.

This is a pacey tale with an appropriately feisty young heroine for modern readers

Andrew Motion brings lyricism but, more importantly, rollicking adventure to this sequel to Treasure Island