This book is like a flame in daylight: beautiful and unexpected. It packs a big effect for something that seems so slight, and almost hard to see.

A stunning and wonderful achievement by a writer touched by greatness. It is the most powerful debut novel I have read in several years . . . An outstanding new Irish novelist.

Unbearably poignant and beautifully told.

At the foundations of the novel is the issue of what happens when a community fails those who need it most ... Baume turns the commonplace minutiae of changing seasons, thoughts and people into the remarkable.

A fascinating portrait of the friendship a man develops with his dog and the companionship he also finds in books…Fear curdles through this story, which skilfully builds suspense as it discloses their painful pasts…The lyrical language is most alive when evoking landscape…Baume [has] a gift for inventive use of language…Baume succeeds is reawakening her reader’s capacity for wonder…so much so that the book and its one-eyed dog became companions I was loathe to leave.

Extraordinary . . . Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a heartbreaking read, and heralds Baume as a major new talent.

So far this year, I’ve read 103 books. You can understand why they might be blurring in my mind by now. Eight of them, though, are as distinct to me today as they were while I was reading them, and each for a different reason. For language that sounds like music, there’s Sara Baume’s Spill Simmer Falter Wither, about a lonely Irish outcast and his one-eyed rescue dog.

Baume’s sympathy for her 'wonkety' characters is infectious and their relationship – in all its drama and ordinariness – beautifully conveyed. Places and smells, plants and animals are conjured with loving attention, the narrative propelled by a striking linguistic intensity…Baume’s capacity for wonder turns this portrait of an unusual friendship into a powerful meditation on humanity.

Every so often a book comes along that is so perfect it takes your breath away, and leaves your heart hammering with the beauty of the writing and the sadness of the story. Sara Baume’s debut, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, is such a book … Baume’s prose is full of wonder – inventive, poetic and dazzling, concerned with the smallest details of the natural landscape and the terrains of human emotion. Absolutely astounding.

A deft and moving debut…To capture this constrained setting and quiet character requires specific skills, which Baume has in spades…It’s a claustrophobic, affecting debut and Baume has a rare ability to look afresh at muted scenes and ordinary objects…It’s not easy to tell such a sparse tale, to be so economic with story, but the book hums with its own distinctiveness, presenting in singing prose an unforgettable landscape peopled by two unlikely Beckettian wanderers, where hope is not yet lost.

Exhilarating . . . This is a novel bursting with brio, braggadocio and bite. Again and again it wows you with its ambition . . . It’s hard to imagine a more exciting debut novel being published this year.

Ambitious and impressive . . . Baume’s engaging, intriguing and brightly original first novel may mark a comparably significant debut.

An exceptional, startling, and original book.

This extraordinary novel was recommended to me by just about everyone I know. It is a vivid debut that shows that Baume is a talent to keeo an eye on ... It is a sweepingly poetic and heartbreaking meditation on life after grief that I won't quickly forget.

A subtle and powerful story about a man and his dog … Baume is in terrific control of her prose …her portrayal of her characters and her setting leap off the page … I look forward to whatever she writes next.

One of the most quietly devastating books of the year…What makes Baume’s book worth reading is the stark beauty of her prose. Her lyrical depictions of the Irish seascape are particularly evocative, and reminiscent of Tim Winton at his wild and wintry best…Traditionally Ireland has been synonymous with names like Joyce, Wilde, Beckett and Heaney – a small nation punching above its literary weight. Alongside the recent success of contemporaries like Eimear McBride (A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing) and Colin Barrett (Young Skins), Baume's stunning debut shows that Irish fiction is well and truly back on the map. With Spill Simmer Falter Wither she has created a dark, tender portrait of what it's like to live life on the margins.

Exquisite ... the prose is full of wonder, inventive, poetic and dazzling, concerned with the smallest detail of the natural landscape and the terrain of human emotion.

A mesmerising debut

Powerful, heartbreaking, told with great control. The writing is superb . . . I had an image of all language standing to attention, eager to serve this writer.

One of the most quietly devastating books of the year … Baume's stunning debut shows that Irish fiction is well and truly back on the map. With Spill Simmer Falter Wither she has created a dark, tender portrait of what it's like to live life on the margins.

Told in splendid prose, with lyrical descriptions of the landscape, it’s an involving story and possibly the best first novel to emerge from Ireland since Eimear McBride’s debut.

Baume’s prose has an energy and cadence all of her own: utterly unsentimental, but in its open-hearted, sidelong engagement with the mercurial One Eye and the changing seasons strangely joyous.

Heart-breaking debut from new major talent Sara Baume.

[A] joltingly original debut … Baume charts the growing dependency between these two stray souls with remarkable deftness and almost unbearable poignancy.

Baume’s writing is poetic, delicate and inventive … and despite the undertow of humour, there’s not one whiff of sentimentality – you’re left with the sadness and chronic fearfulness of the truly lonely

[A] skilful debut … lyrical and impressive.

An extraordinarily fresh style …this is an atmospheric novel …Baume is undoubtedly an exceptional new talent.

Those addicted to Shakespeare’s marvellous depiction of jealousy, guilt and teenage joie de vivre will be identifying and falling in love again with characters and their fateful lives… Plunge into The Gap of Time as a fresh, vibrant example of contemporary writing with an original, thought-provoking storyline… The Gap of Time is a top-quality novel.

Stylish and accomplished.

The Winter’s Tale meets House of Cards. Engrossing and ingenious, it deftly rewrites Shakespeare’s lamentation of destructive jealousy as an indictment of deregulated capitalism.

Winterson charms with her playful translation of the cast from the courts of Sicily and Bohemia into our own quotidian life

She deftly captures all the magic and raw emotion of the original.