Wise, funny and fluent

In Malamud we may indeed salute a new American writer of power and originality. He has a wonderful sense of character and atmosphere

One of the best writers in the English language-His work embeds itself in one's consciousness and refuses to be dislodged

A tale of weird and darkly funny invention.

A blood-laced tale of three brothers who rob and kill their way across the US. [The Heavenly Table] will be a book you won’t be able to stop recommending once you’ve finished… A bit like reading Hunter S Thompson crossed with Cormac McCarthy – and a sprinkling of Nick Cave chucked in for brutal measure. It’s the kind of book you just know the Coen Brothers are itching to adapt, with its vast array of quirky characters and black humour

Donald Ray Pollock’s brilliant Western is an earthy, raunchy read – Dickensian in its rogue’s gallery of oddball characters. Full of black humour, it’s superbly constructed and written with true grit. By the end, one is left longing for more and panting for the movie that will surely come

Wild, rollicking, and wonderfully vulgar… A riotous satire that takes on our hopeless faith in modernity, along with our endless capacity for cruelty and absurd pretension.

Truly fabulous… A very wry comedy… When reviewing, I usually mark down pages with particularly well-honed phrases: I stopped doing so when reading The Heavenly Table as I probably would have bookmarked every page…Witty and expansive… I am tempted to say that anyone wanting to understand contemporary America’s political direction might be well advised to start with this novel.

A fine (and often very funny) multi-stranded yarn, set at the dawn of US involvement in WW1 with the nation on the cusp of modernity. As Tarantino's The Hateful Eight dared onscreen, The Heavenly Table lances the boil of modern America on the page.

Pollock’s freewheeling, blood-spilling story is well matched by his prose.

The darkest of Southern Noir… You’ll need a strong stomach and may want a hot shower afterward, but you’ll never forget Pollock’s compelling characters.

In a crowded room full of voices, Don Pollock’s voice is so distinct you’ll hear first and won’t ever, ever forget it. Nor will you want to. And the kicker is this: He somehow keeps getting better.

The Heavenly Table is the latest and strongest evidence that Donald Ray Pollock is one of the most talented and original writers at work today. With uniquely vivid and graceful prose he renders a tale destined to linger in the reader’s mind, a story by turns violent and darkly amusing, and always powerful. The novel is sure to be ranked among the year’s best.

The Heavenly Table is a ferociously gothic ballad about desperate folks with improbable dreams and scant means. It is potent and chimeric, dank, violent, swamped in tragedy—and funny as hell.

Donald Ray Pollock is a master-worker. This great novel flows like buttermilk, so smooth and entertaining that you won't be ready for the left hook it delivers to your heart or its sophisticated moral analysis of human life. Pollock has an omniscient eye like Gogol, taking in a vast scene while spinning tales within tales. Readers will love him, writers will study him.

Full of bright-hued mayhem and scatological wit... A darkly comic gorefest by a gifted writer.

With furious prose and a Faulknerian eye for character... Pollock's gothic, relentless imagination seduces readers into a fertile time in America's history, exploring the chaos, wonder, violence, sexuality, and ambition of a nation on the cusp of modernity - and the outmoded notion of redemption in a world gone to hell.

Jauntily amoral, amusingly macabre… A beach read to enjoy on the shore of a lake of fire.

His best work yet.

In its bloody, violent, terrible collisions, The Heavenly Table feels like Blood Meridian if Cormac McCarthy had been born with a streak of black humor in him rather than just terseness and rage.

The Heavenly Table is daft, and gruesome, and offensive, and loads of fun to read.

This is gritty western noir at its best, with impeccably placed humour and gruesome graphic scenes… Pollock writes with such fluidity and emotive intensity about his deprived and often depraved characters, about the hardship and savagery in their lives, and of their grit and determination to better themselves. They are so fabulously drawn that, at times, it feels as if the Jewett boys could just ride off the pages in a blaze of dust… it would make an excellent introduction for newcomers to the world of Mr Pollock, who is in my opinion a cracker of a storyteller.

Pollock makes you root for the three dirt-poor outlaws in this wicked world and writes like an angel – an angel that has escaped from a lunatic asylum.

This is an often violent, frequently hilarious and always engaging novel that will keep you on the edge of your seat. The text is rich with literary echoes, but Pollock’s deadpan style and imaginative daring are entirely his own.

Dark, violent and very, very funny, The Heavenly Table is part Western, part crime novel about flawed characters looking for a little bit of happiness as they hurtle into a frightening and uncertain future. It’s a brilliant mix of Elmore Leonard and James Lee Burke – and there is no higher praise.

There’s a moment right at the start of Roddy Doyle’s new book, Smile, that will make you shiver – dark undercurrents under a banal exterior… More experimental in form, and with less humour than you might expect from Doyle, Smile is the 59-year-old author’s attempt to shake us out of complacency… For my part, the book’s triumph rests on Doyle’s ability to reflect how Victor’s experience of abuse has unmoored him from the people around him.

In a sharply observed novel, Doyle explores memory, relationships and sanity.

Smile has all the features for which Roddy Doyle has become famous: the razor-sharp dialogue, the humour and the superb evocation of childhood – but this is a novel unlike any he has written before.

The final pages of the novel are shocking, and they turn everything preceding it on its head. It’s testament to the power of Doyle’s writing that the ending is deeply moving, and so very sad.

One that stuck with me for a long, long time after I had finished it… This is one of my favourite books of the year so far. How the story ultimately plays out left me satisfied, cold and off-balance. A rare thing.

A surprise. It’s unsettling and evocative, but not what you’d expect from the beloved author… The wit and sharp dialogue are classic Doyle, but the dark, unexpected ending will linger long in the mind. A brilliant read.

Who writes the lives, hopes, dreams, sorrows and failures of ordinary people with greater insight, empathy and humanity than Roddy Doyle?... It’s as profound, funny, sad and shocking as anything Roddy has ever written.

So cleverly written we are caught up in the narrative and the final reveal is deeply disturbing. Doyle has again proved himself an author who can create the sense of time and place that takes the reader into the backstreet bars of Dublin and shows the dangerous undertow of life in Ireland.

This is a performance few writers could carry off: a novel constructed entirely from bar stool chatter and scraps of memory. But you can’t turn away. It’s like watching a building collapse in slow motion… Doyle has perfected a narrative technique that’s elliptical without feeling coy.

[Doyle] experiments with time, adding an edgy dream-like quality to the writing… There is no shortage of the author’s trademark dialogue where the men chat about their favourite topics, basically pilfering of Doyle’s own Two Pints Facebook wheeze… Smile is a precise perceptive study of male vulnerability and quietly portrays the stunted life of a lonely, damaged man.

It’s a captivating story that has all the features his readers love him for: razor-sharp dialogue, humour and warm evocations.

In contrast to the manic colloquial energy of Doyle’s early work, this novel, his eleventh, feels moody and spare – a meditation on how wisdom wounds.

An unforgettable journey into Ireland’s darkest past.

A welcome return to form by the master of bittersweet black comedy, dialogue and drama… A profoundly moving, occasionally disturbing and important read.

A profound examination of the stories we tell other people – and ourselves.

Fans of Doyle's previous bestsellers, including The Commitments and Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, will not be disappointed.

Doyle captures the febrile atmosphere of being at school perfectly

A raw, powerful and compelling story

A novel of great humour and creativity

A fitting tribute to a play built on magic and illusion. It’s a celebration of theatre, yes, but just as much a celebration of learning and teaching. Atwood’s spellbinding adaptation is a testament to Shakespeare’s lasting relevance.

Atwood’s novel reflects the play’s multifaceted nature… A fun and imaginative novel.

Atwood unrolls a dazzling remake of The Tempest… Ebullient comedy and keen perceptiveness combine in a bravura fictional tribute to Shakespeare.

A passionately original, heady, often musical modern remix.

I’d love to wake up on Christmas morning with Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed nestled in my stocking.

[A] highlight.

[Hag-Seed is] particularly clever and witty, with layer upon layer of correspondences with the original text waiting to be teased out by readers.

What’s impressive here is not just 77-year-old Atwood’s undimmed brilliance but the sheer effort she puts into the project… An absorbing read but also an erudite examination and explanation of the play’s themes. Not to be missed.

[It] would make an amazing Christmas present.

Atwood brings forth a cast of characters that comfortably inhabit their own world but often burst out of the page in song and rhyme. It is a playful piece of writing, tempered by grief and revenge and the bitterness that can consume, but ultimately this is a book full of the joys of redemption and hope. Wonderful.

Cleverly done… Very complex, like a set of Russian dolls. But it works amazingly well.

Delightfully crazy.

Rich and inventive… The play-within-a-play tripe is audaciously Shakespearean, and so is Atwood’s free-ranging imagination and witty way with language.

Masterful… Clever, funny and tender

She casts The Tempest adrift in a prison and makes a magisterial case for the timeless, classless relevance of Shakespeare’s plays.

I am in awe of Atwood

A real must read