An imaginative investigation into the besetting issues of our information-saturated society… Manages to feel relentlessly thoughtful and new.

A completely new kind of novel.

For all technology can add to storytelling, it’s better as a proper book… Very funny… Makes some keen observations about the trouble people have understanding one another.

The high-concept premise is brilliantly simple.

A compelling story about difference, rights and power.

The plot more than stands on its own two feet, driven by classic narrative virtues: chases, hints of the supernatural, a dystopian thriller, intellectual mystery and cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

Chilling and intelligent thriller about words and intelligence, youth and politics.

an engaging portrait of the iGeneration

The technological dimension of the project is cool, and the execution is fantastic. But I’m hooked on the story itself.

Entirely revolutionary

One of our dozen or so best

[A] fantastic story...one of the most superb literary gems I have read in recent times. Facts and fiction merge in this riveting and relevant work. In a word - brilliant!

Riveting...one of Britain's finest writers...I do not expect to read a more formidable piece of short fiction this year.

transports the reader to different places around the globe, and frequently back in time as well

Accomplished and craftsmanlike

'Oddfellows' [the novella that begins the collection] is a sublimely sparse and economically elegant powder keg of a story… Shakespeare’s shape of the story is sheer craftsmanship and the precision of his prose is a shimmering peak of imagination and imagery.

Hooper, with great insight, explores the interactions and connections between spouses and friends - the rivalries, the camaraderie, the joys and tragedies - and reveals the extraordinary lengths to which people will go in the name of love.

This is a quietly powerful story whose dreamlike quality lingers long after the last page is turned.

Magical... such wonderfully assured storytelling: it's been a very long time since a book has taken me by the hand - and the heart - as this one has.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper is incredibly moving, beautifully written and luminous with wisdom. It is a book that restores one's faith in life even as it deepens its mystery. Wonderful!

one of the best survival stories you’ll ever read (think Robinson Crusoe on Mars only more extreme).

Sharp, funny and thrilling, with just the right amount of geekery.

Apollo 13-meets-Robinson-Crusoe-on-Mars, and I guess for those who enjoyed the films Gravity or Moon, this one will be a literary equivalent ... I was, in the end, totally won over by this book in its celebration of how humans can deal with anything the harshness of science and extreme environments can pose, and it kept me reading longer than I meant to

one of the most thrilling and absorbing novels I have ever read

Riveting...a tightly constructed and completely believable story of a man's ingenuity and strength in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.

Weir combines the heart-stopping with the humorous in this brilliant debut novel... the perfect mix of action and space adventure.

An exciting, insightful science- based tale [that] kept me turning the pages to see what ingenious solution our hero would concoct to survive yet anotherimpossible dilemma

I loved that book.

[O]ne of my favourite reads of the year … Funny, irreverent, touching and well-written, this is definitely recommended.

Draws sibling love and rivalries with as much gentle satire as poignancy.

No one delineates familial bad behaviour the way [Hadley] does.

Tessa Hadley has the natural bent of a short-story writer, given to careful description and the kind of feinted closure that pushes uncomfortably past happily ever after.

Hadley is so insightful, such a lovely writer, that she pulls you right into the tangle of wires that connect and trip up the stressed siblings.

Her best so far

Hadley is expert at conveying emotion... The way she draws each character is so good the book feels like a huge achievement. Her best so far.

Hadley, who won the Hawthornden prize this month for The Past, is literary fiction’s best kept secret. Don’t let her fellow novelists keep her for themselves.

[The Past is] magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

There are hints of Larkin in her tender descriptions of landscape and imaginative responses to the ineffable… All her books are wonderful.

This is a hugely enjoyable and keenly intelligent novel, brimming with the vitality of unruly desire.