Writing that easily equals that of the Booker-winning Richard Flanagan...[and] as readable and gripping as any thriller. Only the thrills offered by this bright new star of literature are metaphysical and unexpected and will leave you thinking on a new level about the connections between men, women and places.

Beautifully written...this deserves to follow in the footsteps of 2014's big debut novels The Miniaturist and Elizabeth Is Missing.

Intriguing... a clear and beautifully unadorned prose style... Hooper has written an interesting, nuanced and genuinely moving book.

Hooper has more or less nailed the 'Amelie' charm with this sweet, disarming story of lasting love...Hooper shows great restraint in balancing the quirky with the universal, blurring the lines between them. This may be the best novel to meaningfully feature windblown dust. Hooper's steady hand creates the perfect setup for the unexpected. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens: A man and a woman are one. Two men, a woman and a coyote are one.

Luminous debut...there's a lovely musicality to her prose - care and attention have been spent on the rhythms and melody of her words...wonderfully tender.

Her debut novel is a magical, big-hearted book about one woman's walk to the sea. If Wes Anderson's stylised dream worlds make you happy, you need a copy of Etta and Otto and Russell and James.

A fan of Audrey Niffenegger and Alice Munro, Hooper's sense of playfulness comes across in the book's gentle magical realism'

charming, sweet...there is a singing simplicity that cuts through to the heart of things...fresh and touching

[A] delightful debut novel

Beautifully written...a powerfully moving account.

Picked as one of the hot authors to watch in 2015.

A sweet, redemptive message ...Etta's trek as she comes to the end of her life and reckons with the past, has a real and worthwhile dignity to it.

There's a huge buzz around this debut novel.

Canadian Emma Hooper is sure to be 2015's face of literary quirk.

The friends' life stories unfold in beautifully written, bite-sized chapters that ebb and flow between past and present like the sea Etta is seeking. Unusual, touching and utterly memorable.

An irresistibly enchanting debut novel

Hooper, with great insight, explores the interactions and connections between spouses and friends - the rivalries, the camaraderie, the joys and tragedies - and reveals the extraordinary lengths to which people will go in the name of love.

This is a quietly powerful story whose dreamlike quality lingers long after the last page is turned.

Magical... such wonderfully assured storytelling: it's been a very long time since a book has taken me by the hand - and the heart - as this one has.

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper is incredibly moving, beautifully written and luminous with wisdom. It is a book that restores one's faith in life even as it deepens its mystery. Wonderful!

Close’s wry wit and deadpan delivery...make this debut novel a treat to read. . . . An original confection with echoes of The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing and a dollop of Sex and the City

Jennifer Close’s debut, Girls in White Dresses, follows a group of young women doing all the things they know they shouldn’t—falling for one’s boss, dating gay men—all while drinking far too many mimosas at other people’s weddings

Funny... These stories will resonate with readers in the throes of the quarter-life churn

What a delight! The young women in this hugely appealing book are charming, funny, rueful, poignant - just like their creator, in other words, one of the freshest and most appealing new voices in fiction. I can't wait for more work from Jennifer Close

The only way to express my love for Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close is to tell you that this is the one book that I will be recommending over and over again to all of my friends. I laughed, I cried, I nodded knowingly as the characters waded their way through the hits and misses of their twenties and thirties. I can't remember the last time I loved a book as much as this one

Girls In White Dresses is a dark, funny, intimate romp through boyfriends, first apartments, and great friendships - but beneath the surface lurks the jealousy, disappointment, and love that didn't quite end up the way you thought it would. Jennifer Close's brilliant, deadpan humor made me laugh so hard my own roommate thought I was nuts

Girls in White Dresses is about a group of smart, funny, unapologetically grouchy, always-hungover female friends who kvetch their way through one another's weddings and showers, stare blearily at one another's offspring, sometimes barely tolerate one another's men, but nonetheless have one another's backs through thick and thin. Jennifer Close has written an unsentimental, frank novel about female friendship - its lifelong loyalties and unconditional love

I recently read a book which explores the same post-university landscape that Girls handles; Jennifer Close's Girls In White Dresses. Like Girls, it is often funny, moving and true to (my and other straight women of a certain age living in a big city) life

Delightful… Sharply and sparely written … a great debut

A quiet sense of emotional tragedy, sharp observational humour and writing so economically precise you long to read every sentence twice

Perfects the intimate, easy style that makes reading her such a pleasure

The worlds she creates are so absorbing and believable; she taps into our innate curiosity about people just like ourselves

What she does, in the course of this novel, is show that the simplest family stories often have complex roots and unlikely outcomes. This is a book full of surprises, and Tyler is adept at the great revelation that both startles and throws what has come before into a whole new light

A warm, wise and funny book

A believable and wise read

The texture of everyday experience transmuted into art

[A] wonderful book

When it comes to painting a loving, funny and yet never simplistic portrait of American family life, Anne Tyler is, and always has been, the great mistress

There is no limit to the superlatives that Tyler inspires

With A Spool of Blue Thread, the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist is on typically fine form

Sincerely and carefully told

This is a book that explores moral and psychological ambiguities with extraordinary subtlety

Deftly written with skilful characterisation... A master of conversation

A Spool of Blue Thread does an exquisite job

This is a novel to cherish

Wonderful new novel

A truly delightful read

Ms. Tyler has a knack for turning sitcom situations into something far deeper and more moving

A moving, well-crafted reflection on life and death and the relationships that sustain us through both

How can it be so wonderful!... Tyler remains among the best chroniclers of family life

Astonishingly adept

Tyler describes so accurately the frailties, turmoil and love of family life

No one does family sagas quite like Anne Tyler

Mundane yet magical, thus pure Tyler

Anne Tyler paints a large-scale portrait on a small-scale canvas and does it beautifully

In many ways this novel is a culmination of all those that have gone before it; it combines a multitude of themes and never fails to exact humour alongside the more sombre task of delving into topical issues such as sexuality, relationships and ageing

Absolutely wonderful, a work of genius

It's so rich in detail and reality, so simple, but so compelling. I wept

Is as good as anything she has ever written

Another insightful study of family life. It may be familiar territory for the writer, but she commands it absolutely

One to read on a family holiday

Her gift for producing what seems less like fiction than actuality works wonders

Heartwarming

Highly reccommended

May be her best yet, though, to be honest, this is what I always tend to say after reading the latest Anne Tyler.

Superbly accomplished, perceptive and funny, tugged forward by suspended revelations to its hurricane climax

[Tyler] writes so sparingly and yet her books are dense with the complexities of human emotions

Pure pleasure

[Tyler] has the rapier wit of a true satirist

Anne Tyler is a magician: what she does seems so simple and et it weaves a compelling spell

Utterly absorbing, heartbreaking and endearing

Tyler explores the simmering resentment that often underpins familial relationships, as well as the elusive nature of the American Dream

A book that is shot through with random misfortune, but which takes infinite pleasure in the detail of everyday family life.

Rivalries flare between siblings and secrets unravel, as Tyler shines a brilliant light on our fundamental relationships and the span of life.

Since the characters are actual, flawed human beings, it makes the story unbelievably relatable.

One of the greatest storytellers alive, whose characters arrive on the page like human beings, things happen to them, they react to these things, and then life continues

A stunning novel about three generations of a family that perfectly captures the fights, petty irritations and deep connections between them

A rich and perceptive examination of uneven family relationships