Ness goes beyond what we expect books to do. Beyond poetry, beyond the word, beyond the bomb - it is an aftertime song. It is dark, ever so dark, nimble and lethal. It is a triumphant libretto of mythic modernism for our poisoned age. Ness is something else, and feels like it always has been.

Scrooge is reimagined for 21st-century London in Posy Simmonds’s devilishly good graphic novel, Cassandra Darke — her first in a decade. Cassandra is a marvellous creation… There is too much clever detail in each of the panels to take in everything at first read — but Cassandra is an antiheroine you’ll want to return to.

Simmonds has long been something of a national treasure.

[This] glorious, inky black tale about a mean-spirited old bag of a Chelsea art deal provides more proof of [Posy Simmond’s] genius.

The new graphic novel by cartoonist, writer and national treasure Posy Simmonds... is a page-turner, [but] it’s impossible to gallop through words and pictures that are so richly textured, so sharply observed.

A Christmas crime story that’s bags of fun… Simmonds’ pictorial storytelling is a joy.

Simmonds’ drawings are exquisitely observed, and seamlessly incorporate text messages and online news reports. Her muted palette, with occasional splashes of colour, is absorbing and in the curmudgeonly Cassandra… Simmonds has produced another character that comes living and breathing off the page.

Posy Simmonds's delightful new graphic novel Cassandra Darke, full of wonderfully observed vignettes... [is] treasurable.

[Posy Simmonds] is back with a new anti-heroine… [and] jewel-sharp illustrations.

Posy Simmonds is the mother of the British graphic novel… The end [of Cassandra Darke] is startlingly poignant, and like all good satire it has a quiet reflection on human mortality at its heart.

What a huge treat awaits the readers of this book… [Cassandra Darke] makes one pause in awe to consider the sheet amount of wit, invention, insight, observation, skill, dedication and care that has been distilled into this 94 pages.

In Simmonds's latest nuanced, warm-hearted satire a heartless art dealer makes a discovery that pushes her out of grim rut and into a dark quest.

Simmonds is a copper-bottomed genius, I have absolutely no idea why she isn't a baroness.

Festive-season glitter and grimness mingle in this handsome Christmas book.

Simmonds offers a sharp portrait of a polarised London.

A page-turning graphic novel… sharp, witty, deliciously observant and so exquisitely drawn it took my breath away. The perfect book for Christmas.

The visual and moral chiaroscuro of the novel, and its unflinching depiction of pathos and loneliness in the most and least privileged of social milieus, make it a strong contender, if not for the meretricious glitter of literary awards, then for the more lasting prize of inclusion in the canon of comic-strip masterpieces.

Posy Simmonds’s…line and way of telling a story are equally deft.