I adore Sadie Jones' writing... [Amy and Lan is] funny, moving, and really goes to the heart of why trying to change for the better isn't as simple as it sounds

Jones's fictional landscape is jam-packed, abundant, and her smallholding as thick with intrigue as the Borgias' court... I don't think I've read another recent novel that better captures the pure sugar-rush of childhood; the sense of a life so exhilarating and ecstatic that it is almost too much to bear

I couldn't put it down. Amy and Lan is a love letter to nature, to the seasons, to the ideal of simple living with all its human complications. It's a beautifully evoked story, full of empathy and hope

Achingly poignant... This is a novel of quiet beauty, vividly evoking the magnitude of childhood loss and the capacity for hope

A bright, bittersweet novel

I loved Amy and Lan: the way parents mess up their children's lives is heartbreaking yet beautifully conveyed. I've long been a Sadie Jones fan but this may be her best yet. Poignant, compelling and brilliant

Alive with the wonders of seasonal changes and the thrum of farm life, Amy and Lan will make you cry. Complex, beautifully written and true. I loved this book

Compelling... [Jones] doesn't disappoint with this intermittently joyous but affecting portrait of childhood

Jones brilliantly ventriloquises Amy and her best friend Lan... She conveys their passionate attachment to the freedom of their unconventional upbringing and deep connection to nature

Sadie Jones is a consummate novelist of the modern family, in all its mess, cruelties, loyalties, treacheries and tragedies. This child's eye perspective on the 21st century attempt at the Good Life is topical, comical and horrifying. I read it heart in mouth

An enthralling, original novel: utterly convincing

A send-up of rural nostalgia and a comedy of manners combined with a thoughtful, genuine desire to understand the motives behind this 'better' way of life... By capturing specific moments in each season as the years pass, Jones beautifully conveys the sensual, almost bacchanalian glory of hay-making; the excitement of deep snow drifts in winter

A gentle but engaging read, Jones captures the beautiful simplicity and enduring hardships of farm life, painting a timely portrait of agriculture in a capitalist society... Beautifully written

The novel unfolds over five years as a series of evocative vignettes, with a pulse of jeopardy in the pair's uneasy sense of adult tensions

Enchanting, funny and layered in pathos... Sadie Jones' unusual take on the rural dream is a gift of a book

A magnificent achievement. So honest, so thorough and so well written, both Angela's search for truth and this book are about the deepest possible experience of transmitted collective/personal trauma.

Angela Findlay has written a brave and unflinchingly honest exploration of the complex legacy of her German grandfather's activities as a top-ranking Wehrmacht officer in WW2. Her book is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the far-reaching impact of transgenerational memory, shame or trauma, and a moving testament to the personal and collective value of reckoning with the past.


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Fascinating ... and extremely courageous work.

Scull delivers a remarkable history of psychiatry. The final section is a devastatingly effective chronicle of the rise of psychopharmacology and its tendency to regard all mental illnesses as potentially treatable with the right medication. This sweeping and comprehensive survey is an impressive feat

A carefully researched history of psychiatry, it provides a critical assessment of the psychiatric enterprise. In the rush to find cures for psychiatric illnesses, Scull believes that there has been a disappointing lack of focus on patients