Intelligent and absurd, precise and dream-like . . . I know of few other authors who can capture an atmosphere of the eerie and the bizarre as well as she does

August Blue holds the remarkable balancing act that is key to Levy's writing: perfect precision at the sentence level combined with a dedication to exploring the slipperiness of reality

Playful inquisitiveness and lush descriptions balance out a bassline of melancholy . . . Nobody does enigmatic like Levy

[Levy] can sketch a scene with a few precise brushstrokes and conjure emotion out of white space on the page. A recurring call and response between Elsa and her alter ego becomes a musical refrain that takes on ever new colors. Those familiar references to swimming and bees glint through like leitmotifs

A gleeful read . . . [Deborah Levy's] prose is as quick and bare as ever, her manner excitingly abrupt . . . You know you'll read August Blue again

Levy's lyrical, pitch-perfect prose, where every word is weighted with significance, is an exploration of our reasons for living, the forces that drive us and the inner music that controls the rhythms of our dance through life and love

This is a stunner

Deborah Levy's work inspires a devotion few literary authors ever achieve

August Blue is Levy's eighth novel, and since her 20s, she has been refining her ability to evoke feeling through writing rather than to narrate it. Her work is deeply influenced by art forms that express the embodied experience, like cinema and dance . . . Levy's writing is psychologically complex

[An] enigmatic novel . . . Deborah Levy's writing is rather like Philip Glass's music . . . mesmerising . . . enigmatic . . . refreshingly original

[A] wistful, fabular new novel . . . Since the 1990s, Deborah Levy's novels have combined a gauzy, episodic quality with pinpoint sensual detail drawn from peripatetic lives, crossing fluently between languages and national borders. Her style is full of gaps and sharp edges, circling around questions of gender and power, inheritance, autonomy and lack . . . The narrative here has a fittingly musical quality, running forward in spurts, pausing, repeating key phrases

Beautifully atmospheric . . . a dazzling portrait of melancholy and renewal . . . Levy is a master novelist and in August Blue, a beguiling story of how identities collide and crack, she shows us what it feels like to be a divided self

Deborah Levy delves into the deepest patterns of family connection and self-invention in August Blue, the riddling, elegant tale of a globe-trotting concert pianist whose subconscious is catching up with her

Deborah Levy's hazy, dreamlike novels, often set in sun-drenched Mediterranean backdrops, are an essential accompaniment to any summer holiday . . . a lyrical, surreal trip of self discovery - one that is full of Levy's wit and curious images

A meditation on artistic creativity that is sensual, enigmatic and strangely addictive

Levy is no stranger to the uncanny. Her novels teem with oddness, with dreamlike, vertiginous scenes

Levy's elegantly ludic investigation into selfhood, mother love and meaning

Levy fans will delight in August Blue’s heady exploration of female creativity

I'm obsessed. This is a masterful, at times familiar and relatable, yet ultimately disturbing portrayal of a friendship. Constantly surprising, often dark and at times sinister, it is without fail always entertaining and funny

Both wickedly entertaining and thought-provoking. I couldn't stop turning the page!

A unique novel... with a clever premise and definitely one that will provoke a lot of discussion.

Funny, fresh and full of drama, not a word goes to waste in this extraordinary debut

A striking, often wickedly funny debut... Agbaje-Williams brilliantly captures the inner monologue as well as the conversational style of each of the three through which their whole cultural milieu takes shape around them... An original and potent comedy of manners with an ingenious final twist

The best debut I've read in years - a tender examination of class, masculinity and place

Amazingly assured first novel. Magee is too good a writer... Gentle as well as brutal

As beautiful as it is brilliant. Reading Close to Home is like crossing a frontier into a new and thrilling territory

Close To Home announces an exciting new voice - at once open and wary, tender and unyielding - and sharply alive to the pains and discoveries and mysteries of youth

Ringing out clear and true as a bell, it gleams with tenderness and perception. There are few narrators so unassuming and unaffected, yet so full of sharp intelligence

Precise, compulsive, companionable and genuinely moving. Michael Magee writes a world we see far too little of in contemporary literature. We need books like this

A beautiful and devastating debut novel about political memory, violence, masculinity, and the impossibility of escaping your origins.

A sharp and humane novel about a young man, and a city, caught in the painful throes of reimagining themselves. It rings with authenticity, and the wisdom of hard-won observation and experience - a hymn to the ways in which art can be a lifeline and an escape. Michael Magee's debut is an important addition to the burgeoning new canon of Belfast literature

Compulsively readable - you will need to know how this ends!

Sharp, immediate, beautiful writing. A vivid portrait of modern Belfast and of how our circumstances shape our lives. Every character is drawn with nuance and complexity, with great precision and attention to detail. I really loved this book

Artfully crafted, compassionate, precise and unafraid. I loved this book

Close to Home tracks brilliantly written characters across a vividly drawn Belfast

One of the year’s most distinctive and immersive debuts . . . Drawing on his own experiences, Michael Magee refreshes the post-Troubles novel to wrestle with his community’s painful heritage of violence and poverty. It sounds bleak, but Sean’s voice fizzes with life

It's hard to find fault with a debut novel that unfold its storylines and characters with such care, handling themes of class, masculinity, addiction and trauma with both tenderness and a matter-of-factness

Michael Magees Close to Home is yet another brilliant novel to emerge from Northern Ireland, making sense of the impact of the long conflict and the transition to troubled peace; Magee powerfully delineates the psychology of those crushed by betrayal

A searing debut with an unforgettable voice, Chain Gang All-Stars will force you to reevaluate what freedom in America really means.

It is an up-to-the-minute j'accuse that speaks to the eternal question of what it truly means to be free. And human. Imagine The Hunger Games refashioned into a rowdy, profane, and indignant blues shout at full blast.

Breathtaking and pulse-pounding... Both the political allegory and the edge-of-your-seat action work beautifully. Readers will be wowed.

[An] enthralling debut... An unmissable read

Adjei-Brenyah compels the reader to look beyond the page, blurring the lines between modern America and the hellscape he so energetically imagines

Few others this year have touched Adjei-Brenyah for ideas and ambition… perhaps the most indelible novel of 2023

A fizzy love letter to the prototypical romcom

So much of Sittenfeld's work exists in the dissection and comprehension of female desire

Flirting with the tropes of its namesake genre, this playful novel follows Sally, a writer on an "S.N.L."-like show called "Night Owls," who falls in love with one of its guest hosts. Their relationship develops via e-mail in the post-grocery-wiping, pre-vaccine days of covid-19. When Sally decides to visit her beloved in L.A., their time together in his Topanga mansion requires her to navigate incredulity, insecurity, and an offer that she feels is an "affront to my independence." The novel is preoccupied with the instinctual nature of self-sabotage, and with the fulfillment that can come from defying ingrained impulses

Insightful romcom sparkles with real wit and wisdom

Whip smart and really funny

Scores big on giving readers an insight into the machinations of a TV writers-room

Full of dazzling banter and sizzling chemistry

If you ever wanted a backstage pass to Saturday Night Live, this book is for you

Excellent

Both a brilliant portrait of the comedy world and a witty grown-up love story. Lives up to its name