A real achievement; its dialogue sparks and its voice is true. For Janice Galloway the trick is simply to keep writing

This is like a Scottish Catcher in the Rye. You actually feel you’re inside this woman’s head, it is that visceral. And having experienced a downward spiral myself, I so admire her accuracy in every detail

Claustrophobic but extraordinary

An account from the inside of a mind cracking up...its writing is as taut as a bowstring. From brilliant title to closing injunction, it hums with intelligence, clarity, wit; and, its heroine's struggle for order and meaning seduces our minds, exposes how close we all of us are to insanity. Joy, as Galloway's heroine reluctantly lets us know that she's called, is simply that dangerous step or two nearer the edge

Distressing but immaculately written

This remarkably original work has gained Janice Galloway an almost immediate reputation as one of Scotland's most interesting serious prose writers

What’s remarkable about this novel is that despite its dark themes, it manages to be uplifting… Joy Stone…is witty, warm and unfailingly honest about her hopes and fears.

A very funny and sad novel

Poignant and original...a wonderfully sensitive portrait of a woman who doesn't give up trying to find the "trick" to making life go on

Tessa Hadley is funny, precise, sensuous, and one of the best writers of family life that you are ever likely to encounter – simultaneously sympathetic and penetrating

She deserves all the prizes. Hadley is psychologically acute, drily witty and…absolutely wonderful on place

Splendid… Hadley’s gift for depicting the interior lives of children and adults rivals Ian McEwan’s

Tessa Hadley excels at presenting the contrasting viewpoints of children, teenagers and adults, and her evocative descriptions of the English countryside are a delight.

Poetic, tender and full of wry humour. A delight

Tender dissection of a certain sort of English middle-class life is magnificently done: half celebration, half elegy.

Tessa Hadley has an exquisite eye for detail.

Full of wonders

A brilliant British take on two generations of family inhabiting the same house.

An astute and finely written novel

Exquisite… For anyone who cherishes Anne Tyler and Alice Munro, the book offers similar deep pleasures. Hadley crystallizes the atmosphere of ordinary life in prose somehow miraculous and natural.... Extraordinary

An extremely affecting novel of cumulative richness, yet there is nothing ponderous about Hadley’s sparkling and sensuous prose: she captures the comedy of family life brilliantly.

No one writes family like Hadley

A classy, observant page turner.

Sharply delicate.

Tender and well-made and poignant, it is a gentle delight.

Masterly yet understated fiction.

Time and again, the sheer truthfulness of Hadley’s writing blows me away. In the last section, the beauty of the structure unfurls like a peacock’s tail.

Subtle and beautifully written.

Probably the best novel of the year.

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.