Exceptional... more than simply an exercise in chilling atmospherics... Chapman takes the women's - often seemingly petty - hopes and fears, and creates a fascinating portrait of group consciousness. A psychologically unnerving, elusive and readable book

A gem; weird, vivid and acrobatic, its intricacies are sophisticated, its stance beguiling and complex. This is a writer of real power and aplomb

This scary, peculiar story of institutionalised women is immaculately handled and builds to a disturbing but inevitable climax

A beautiful, edgy and captivating novel

An eerily brilliant, psychologically sharp take on the Bacchae set in a 1920s Finnish sanatorium

Quietly and carefully, Chapman evokes the oppressive indoor life of the self-interned 'up-patients'. There is an elegant sparseness to her writing, complemented by her use of tactile metaphors

Has the compelling horror of a Gothic fairy tale... Chapman creates a novel that stays with the reader and leaves a sense of being drawn inexorably into a deepening nightmare

Subtly, disquietingly hermetic

Rural Finland may not seem a very likely locale for a gripping intellectual thriller, but pulling this off is merely the first of Maile Chapman's many accomplishments here. Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto - what a title! - is as creepy as Patricia Highsmith at her best and as psychologically sharp (and confounding) as early Ian McEwan. With its portrayal of how quickly the conscience in shipwreck succumbs to delusion, Chapman has written more than a beautifully observed and utterly convincing first novel: she has written something of unfakeable importance

This subtly unnerving tale raise goose bumps as the tension builds towards the menacing finale

Chapman deftly ratchets up the tension, pitting off-kilter emotions against a sense psychological doom as the novel builds to an unsettling conclusion

A wonderful novel which challenges your beliefs.

Translators give their wits and craft selflessly in service of others' work; this is a triumph of fidelity and unpretentiousness.

Tom McCarthy's C... a novel blazing with energy and, for all its postmodern ambitions, a rich, old-fashioned yarn

I surmise that it was because Tom McCarthy's C also hovers on an uneasy breaking-point, between fiction and philosophy, that I wanted it to win the Booker Man prize.

McCarthy's high-voltage writing runs through the reader like a charge.

New readers could grasp just how boldly he has tried to balance sumptuous period-fiction prose with a mischievous desire to sabotage his chosen form.

An exciting, revealing and touching story

The novel's interest (or lack thereof) lies mainly in its stubborn refusal of anything resembling a narrative payoff...I loved it, right down to the prose, which, unspooling in a vaguely menacing present-continuous, sounds like screenplay instructions to a set designer

A dazzlingly agile novel about the interconnectedness of things

Entertaining as well as ambitious

McCarthy's descriptions of nature and of the everyday details of the era are vivid, surprising and true. And while the writing is often beautiful and ornate, the story has a bracing, Beckett-like severity