Vann’s gift – his quest, almost – is a willingness to explore the unimaginable, the unthinkable, on the page. He is the real thing – a mature, risk-taking and fantastically adept fiction writer who dares go to the darkest places, explore their most appalling corners. I haven’t read a novel as rough and shocking or, importantly, as wise and warm as this one in a long time.

Vann’s rendering of the everyday gratings of family life is pitch-perfect ... A well-written, unflinching exploration of the often terrifying chasm between who we want to be, and who we actually are.

Vann is a brave writer, daring to write about and depict things that most other authors would baulk at, but that’s what makes him so good – that unflinching eye for the darkness you could potentially find in any of us, given the wrong chain of events ... If you want the naked, awful truth, then dive in.

This is a novel of violence, destruction and ruin. There is no salvation. And yet Mr Vann’s soaring writing carries it forward – a reminder of the beauty that can grace even the beastliest things.

Unputdownable, thundering at breathtaking speed towards the shocking climactic act. Brilliantly chilling.

The characters in Dirt read as archetypes, figures in a Beckett play …The last pages of Dirt are lit by a berserk energy. It’s as if Vann has pulled off the trick of putting us inside a Hitchcock maniac … When you finally put this book down, break the spell and walk away, you’re left with a deeper resonance, a lingering sadness.

Uncompromisingly direct.

Another dispatch from dysfunctional suburbia by one of the US’s hottest writers…A morbid fascination with the family’s eye-poppingly vicious interactions keeps you turning the pages…It’s hard to forget.

David Vann has a talent for being able to pack a lot into very few words - and to make them all effective and forceful. ...compelling. If I start reading Vann I know that I'm going to have to keep reading no matter how painful, how distressing the story...what marks this book out as being something special is the forensic examination of the tipping point at which a disturbed mind, an unfocused mind tumbles into madness.

A powerful story of a family on the verge of imploding, David Vann's novel might not be an easy read - but it is, undoubtedly, a book you will want to devour in a single sitting.

Dirt’s basic set-up , a lone parent and a child locked together in unhealthy co-dependency, is reminiscent of southern tales by Flannery O’Connor, John Kennedy Toole and Tennessee Williams. And while Galen’s religious obsessions align Dirt more with O’Connor or Toole, it’s Williams’s world that the novel is otherwise closest to: the unforgiving, brain-invading heat; the incessant family squabbling; the autocratic patriarch (dead, but still looming in this case); the over-devoted mother; the furtive, incest-like relationship; and the failed, trapped central character, nevertheless convinced of his special gifts and destiny.

What Vann does so well is to take recognisably ordinary characters and put them in critical situations, where tiny decisions or actions have life-altering outcomes. This is what gives his books their nightmarish quality -- the feeling that these events could happen to anyone.

I found it impossible to put down. I read it over a couple of rushed afternoons and found myself gasping for air…Days later I still couldn’t get Galen’s voice – that distinctive blend of mocking, vulnerable and cruel – out of my head…It [Dirt] is both brilliant and painful; comic and disturbing; full of despair about humanity and moments of warmth; deranged and beautifully executed.

Vann's writing is vivid and shocking, and his imagination is extraordinary.

Vann presents us with a pitch perfect rendering of the everyday problems of family life, while simultaneously depicting an outlandish and horrifying battle between son, mother and aunt.

What holds the attention is not a dramatic, twisting tale providing sudden revelations but an intimate narrative voice that renders people, places and experiences in vivid detail. Clever Girl is a remarkable novel by one of this country’s finest, if most unassuming talents.

Hadley is at her best when recalling how it felt growing up 40 years ago, but also how maternal bonds both reward and frustrate.

A gripping tale.

Entirely in keeping with Tessa Hadley’s subtle, intelligent and realistic storytelling.

Hadley imagines her characters, and enters their minds, with wonderful clarity and truthfulness.

The best novel I read, by a mile… It's so finely worked, like emotional needlepoint, though she handles time masterfully, too. Stella, its heroine, seems always to be moving towards the light, and I read the last 20 pages with tears pouring down my cheeks.

Tessa Hadley writes beautifully – she can take you right inside a person's mind... The stories are exquisitely told and full of detail.

Looking for the next Kate Atkinson or Alice Munro? Pick up this lovely novel.

If I had to recommend one novel to you this year, it would be Clever Girl.

Tessa Hadley makes "ordinary" lives extraordinary... Perhaps her finest novel yet.

Gorgeously erudite.

She deserves all the prizes. Hadley is psychologically acute, drily witty and…absolutely wonderful on place… It’s a remarkable novel, not least for the seamless way Hadley handles the passage of time, though its chief bit of daring for me is its expression of what cleverness feels like, and the impact this may have on the trajectory of an ordinary woman’s life… I read the novel’s last 30 pages with tears rolling down my cheeks, a rare thing for me.

A truthful, profound snapshot of the kind of life that often gets overlooked. Moving, fresh, enlightening. A fantastic novel

A fresh, engaging take on the relationship between rich and poor

A bittersweet coming-of-age tale of displacement during the southern African nation's 'lost decade'

A tale of our time, a powerful condemnation of global inequality from the point of view of a 10-year-old in impossible circumstances... a stunning piece of literary craftsmanship

Bulawayo, whose prose is warm and clear and unfussy, maintains Darling's singular voice throughout, even as her heroine struggles to find her footing. Her hard, funny first novel is a triumph.

Wonderfully, this is a novel whipped with the complexities of African identities in a post-colonial and globalised world and its most compelling theme is that of contemporary displacement, a theme that will resonate with many readers

This is a young author to watch

This is a very readable tale, thanks to some excellent writing and its central character: a likeable heroine in a difficult world

We Need New Names is a distinct and hyper-contemporary treatment of the old You Can’t Go Home Again mould, and the book has more than enough going for it to easily graduate from the Booker longlist to the final six

deeply felt and fiercely written first novel

Bulawayo's novel may scream Africa, but her deft and often comic prose captures memories and tastes, among them the bitterness of disappointment, that transcend borders

Bulawayo excels... there is an inevitable nod to Achebe and the verbal delights and child's-eye view of the world is redolent of The God of Small Things. Otherwise, the magic is all Bulawayo's own

Proof again that the Caine prize for African writers really knows how to pick a winner… [It’s] a tour de force. Ten-year-old Darling is an unforgettable and necessary new voice: add her to the literary cannon

This brilliant novel was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

An exceptionally fine novel, as powerful and memorable as Coetzee's magnificent Disgrace... We need new novels like this – authentic, original and cathartic

There is no doubt that a new star of African female writing is truly born. The one-to-watch

Follow ten-year-old Darling from the Paradise shantytown to America in this searing indictment of Mugabe’s Zimbabwe

Shocking, often heartbreaking – but also pulsing with energy

A poignant, witty, original and lyrical coming of age story

Talented and ambitious

A powerful fictional condemnation of global inequality

From the opening chapter…the first-person narrative achieves a breathtaking vibrancy, ambition and pathos

Deserved all the publicity it got