A force of nature ... a life-enhancing talent

His paragraphs are unnoticeably beautiful, his heart always on show, and he writes with a social accuracy that is devastating

Compelling and heartbreaking . . beautiful, yet simple and utterly convincing

Cements Ryan as the sharpest chronicler of modern Irish life

Painfully moving ... Ryan’s work has set a benchmark to which other writers will aspire.

Clear-eyed and moving.

A powerful and touching meditation on loneliness and isolation . . . Ryan continues to establish himself as an important voice in recording contemporary Ireland.

Powerful . . . Ryan is clearly committed to his subject and possesses the insight and empathy to illuminate the heart of the matter.

Ryan is a remarkably good chronicler of contemporary Irish life

Ryan holds you to the page by the sheer force of his language ... If you’re interested in the state of Irish fiction now, pick up a copy of this book.

Displaying again his exceptional gift for pinning a voice to the page, Ryan transforms Johnsey’s self-torturing internal soundtrack into something that’ll have you alternately cringing, cheering and laughing.

Ryan’s urgent, poetic prose captures the internal distress of his main character with forensic intensity. . . . a testament to this brightest of new writing talents. . . . Ryan has risen to the challenge of his second novel admirably. Recommended.

Powerful writing that certainly cements Ryan’s status as the newly crowned king of what the Irish Times has dubbed “recession lit”.

[Hadley] is a gifted anatomist of human relationships... Her particular genius lies in the elegance and precision with which she captures the fleeting emotion, the passing, indefinable perception or tiny epiphany.

I absolutely loved Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day… There are few British writers who are more acute at a micro-level on the psychology of their characters and I was completely engrossed by this novel.

I loved Tessa Hadley’s Late in the Day. Hadley brings the gifts of a still-life painter to her fiction yet manages to produce satisfying twists and turns to her storytelling.

Hadley’s fiction — both long and short — has, with a delicious, detached clarity, observed the shape of relationships: their unconventionality, their transgressions. She is a superb stylist, with none of the pretensions that have latterly been attached to such a term: dispassionate, yet voluptuous in her prose.

With masterly economy, the hallmark of her style… Hadley takes us back and forth in time, and her forensic dissection of friendship, marriage and grief is a mature work by a writer at the top of her game.

Gorgeous, utterly absorbing… More than many of her contemporaries, the British writer Tessa Hadley understands that life is full of moments when the past presses up against the present, and when the present transforms the past. Her brilliant new novel, Late in the Day, explores both with equal urgency.

A great novel... Hadley's wit is Austenesque.

Much like Virginia Woolf in Mrs Dalloway, Hadley is excellent at capturing how the past presses upon each present moment… Her exploration of generational dynamics, between parents and their children, is engrossing… [a] real triumph.

In her masterly seventh novel Tessa Hadley… is possibly most impressive as an analyst of small gestures and an inspired noticer of things… [Hadley’s descriptions] have a hallucinatory vividness and everything in the story seems placed and considered with enormous care, from the smallest detail… to the subtle emotional truths which form the basis of all Hadley’s fiction. With a single flourish, she can make us interested in even the most peripheral characters, and their lives beyond the book.

Like [Tessa Hadley's] previous fiction, Late in the Day explores the seams and fault lines of private life with unsentimental clarity... Hadley tells her story in cool, unemphatic prose, eschewing rhetorical crescendos even at moments of crisis and instead conveying the intensity of her characters’ experience through striking metaphor.

A fine-grained novel of friendship, loss and jealousy.

As ever, [in Late in the Day] Hadley's psychological insight is remarkable. She is deeply interested in the minutiae of relationships and the way men and women interact... One of our finest living writers, and if you haven't read her yet then you really must.

For 16 years, [Hadley’s] fiction has turned a beady, amused eye on ordinary lives, illuminating them with quiet authority… virtually all her sentences are perfect… an acute and beautifully observed novel.

Hadley's writing is lyrical, perceptive and has great emotional heft. Go read [Late in the Day]!

Tessa Hadley's Late in the Day promises an intriguing study of the way members of a close-knit group of friends react to the sudden, unexpected loss of one of their number.

Hadley’s great strength is her wise, fine-grained observation of interpersonal relations… Hadley moves with ease between perspective and also back and forth in time.

Tessa Hadley is easily one of my favourite authors writing today, and her new novel – Late in the Day... has been highly praised by everyone I know (and, crucially, trust) who's already got their hands on it.

Tessa Hadley is well-known for her inimitable portrayal of character and her latest effort, Late in the Day, is no disappointment... A smart exploration of human nature, desire, and friendship.

A penetrating observer of human behavior, [Hadley] has a gift for dialogue that bristles with what remains unsaid… vividly imagined… Hadley presents a masterly portrait.

Strange, unsettling — eerily beautiful, discomfiting, stay-up-late-addictive, sometimes hair-raising... Always, it’s Hadley’s high-res magnification on the interplay of marital (and friendship, and parental) dynamics that supplies her work’s steady gold.

[Hadley’s] prose is a form of civilised conversation... Late in the Day is a very good novel indeed… [Hadley] knows when to let silence speak, and she has the rare gift of writing dialogue which both rings true and hints at what had been left unsaid but is keenly and sometimes painfully felt.

A clever, compassionate novel that sings to the possibility of renewal in late middle-age.

[A] splendid, perceptive book… Hadley has expertly examined the complications and intimacies of marriage and family in such novels as The Past, The Master Bedroom and Clever Girl. In Late in the Day she continues her persistent exploration of human frailty and resilience, moving easily between the present and the past to reveal the hard edges and silent compromises that shape all relationships.

Her prose has the penetrating quality of Henry James at his most accessible… and is alert, as Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bowen were, to how time sculpts, warps or casually destroys us... A quiet triumph.

Late in the Day is confident, brilliant, dark and interesting.

Tessa Hadley’s brilliant new novel – an event that always sparks joy… [– is an] elegantly written, ironically witty book… [Hadley] is constantly being favourably compared to Virginia Woolf – as well as Jane Austen and Henry James.

This is not a novel filled with incident, its pleasures are perception, insight and the intense examination of emotions… A very grown-up read.

Tessa Hadley’s compelling new novel, Late in the Day, is a subtle, delicate evocation of modern life… Hadley’s observation is pin-sharp: whether describing a contemporary student’s house, a late-night drive, or simply a quiet room with only the reading light turned on, there is a shapely intelligence at work… There is something of Iris Murdoch’s fierce attention to the physical here.

Tessa Hadley has become literary fiction’s chronicler-in-chief of the lives and loves of the English middle classes… Conveying their lifestyle with shrewd economy… Hadley relies on patient, persuasive observation to draw us into a satisfying family drama of hopes and regrets as viewed from the fag end of middle age.

Tessa Hadley’s great success as a novelist lies in… examining her characters with an unusual degree of psychological subtlety. Her particular strength is to combine a deep excavation of human frailty with compassion for its effects.

Clever and thoughtful… [Late in the Day] is wholly impressive.

Hadley… [is] authoritative and powerful… a complex story structure juxtaposing present and past and featuring carefully timed revelations.

This is the perfect example of domestic fiction done well… Hadley's prose is measured, spare and utterly perceptive of the human condition.

Extraordinarily skilled and penetrating.

The language is poetic and beautifully crafted… [and it] is the measured intimacy of Hadley's language that allows her to capture in so few words, the whirring emotions that stir beyond the surface.

Crisp, considered prose.

Exquisitely written… A slow burn that’s as elegant as it is crushingly emotional.

Late in the Day… [is] beautifully written with moments of real tenderness — I found it immensely enjoyable and thought-provoking.

A wonderfully involving, intelligent and subtle.

One of the best literary offerings so far this year.

A prime study of the modern condition.

Tessa Hadley is one of those rare authors who keep getting better and better… the writing is joyous, and the conclusion will set your heart singing.

Hadley’s prose is so elegant, her quiet observations on ageing, adultery, motherhood and art so penetrating, it is pure reading pleasure.

Unflinching, intelligent and fascinating

Hadley’s elegant sentence-making is pure joy, combining scathing observation with careful compassion in a novel.

A stunning read by a masterly writer.

Late in the Day will delight fans of Tessa’s work and is an excellent introduction to her style for those unfamiliar with her novels. It’s a gentle yet impactful and deeply thought-provoking book that will leave you reflecting on your own choices and relationships – and makes a perfect beginning to a new year of reading.

A brilliant, beautiful novel populated by multifaceted characters and lit by Hadley's insight and skill.

Reflective, poignant and beautifully written, it reminds us that the constant in life is change.

Compelling.

[A] compelling novel… Hadley captures the way old feelings, longings and hidden secrets unravel tight-knit relationships.