A brilliant book

A satirical feast

Ambitious . . . a narrative that spans the whole of the last century

The story of a Ceylonese Odysseus . . . gleaming, ambitious

Beggar's Feast tackles the grand questions of the 20th century - reinvention, power, sacrifice - but what lies at the heart of this sweeping novel is a more intimate concern: how to find peace in an unforgiving world. In Sam Kandy, Randy Boyagoda has created a truly memorable character

Part personal memoir, part polemic; wholly memorable (4 stars)

News stories come and go. It takes a book of this exceptional caliber to focus our attention and marshal our collective commitment to preventing future nuclear horrors

Gripping... exquisitely researched... A superbly crafted tale of Cold War America’s dark underside

This terrifyingly brilliant book - as perfectly crafted and meticulously assembled as the nuclear bomb triggers that lie at its core - is a savage indictment of the American strategic weapons industry, both haunting in its power, and yet wonderfully, charmingly human as a memoir of growing up in the Atomic Age

In this powerful work of research and personal testimony, Iversen chronicles the story of America’s willfully blinkered relationship to the nuclear weapons industry through the haunting experience of her own family in Colorado

A classic horror tale: the charming nuclear family cruising innocently above the undercurrents of nuclear nightmare. But it's true and all the more chilling

What a surprise! You don't expect such (unobtrusively) beautiful writing in a book about nuclear weapons, nor such captivating storytelling. Having read scores of nuclear books, I venture a large claim: Kristin Iversen's Full Body Burden may be a classic of nuclear literature, filling a gap we didn't know existed among Hersey's Hiroshima, Burdick and Wheeler's Fail-Safe and Kohn's Who Killed Karen Silkwood?

With meticulous reporting and a clear eye for details, Iversen has crafted a chilling, brilliantly written cautionary tale about the dangers of blind trust. Through interviews, sifting through thousands of records (some remain sealed) and even a stint as a Rocky Flats receptionist, she uncovers decades of governmental deception. Full Body Burden is both an engrossing memoir and a powerful piece of investigative journalism

A tale that will haunt your dreams

Kristen Iversen's prose is clean and clear and lovely, and her story is deeply involving and full of insight and knowledge; it begins in innocence, and moves through catastrophes; it is unflinching and brave

An enjoyable and powerful read

You may want to save it for a holiday or similar period as it will draw you in so completely that it is hard to stop reading

A beautifully written psychiatric study of difference and compassion

It's an incredible book, that had me crying on the bus more than once

Helping to improve attitudes.

Outstanding book.

I am staggered by these unsentimental and inspiring stories.

He writes unsentimentally… Reading this book changed the course of my work.

Far from the Tree is a landmark, revolutionary book… Andrew Solomon plumbs his topic thoroughly, humanely, and in a compulsively readable style that makes the book as entertaining as it is illuminating.

One of the most extraordinary books I have read in recent times – brave, compassionate and astonishingly humane. Solomon approaches one of the oldest questions – how much are we defined by nature versus nurture? – and crafts from it a gripping narrative. Through his stories, told with such masterful delicacy and lucidity, we learn how different we all are, and how achingly similar. I could not put this book down.

A passionate and affecting work that will shake up your preconceptions and leave you in a better place. It’s a book everyone should read… there’s no one who wouldn’t be a more imaginative and understanding parent – or human being – for having done so… breathtaking reading.

Andrew Solomon reminds us that nothing is more powerful in a child’s development than the love of a parent. This remarkable new book introduces us to mothers and fathers – many in circumstances the rest of us can hardly imagine – who are making their children feel special, no matter what challenges come their way.

"Parenting," writes Andrew Solomon in Far from the Tree, "is no sport for perfectionists." It's an irony of the book, 10 years in the making and his first since The Noonday Demon, that by militating against perfectionism, he only leaves the reader in greater awe of the art of the achievable. The book starts out as a study of parents raising "difficult" children, and ends up as an affirmation of what it is to be human.

The first thing you should know about Andrew Solomon’s new book, Far From the Tree, is that it’s a monumental work. This is a masterpiece of non-fiction, the culmination of a decade’s worth of research and writing, and it should be required reading for psychologists, teachers, and above all, parents. Far From the Tree is a stunning work of scholarship and compassion.

Knotty, gargantuan and lionhearted… Mr. Solomon’s first chapter, entitled 'Son', is as masterly a piece of writing as I’ve come across all year. It combines his own story with a taut and elegant précis of this book’s arguments. It is required reading.

Far-reaching, original, fascinating - Andrew Solomon's investigation of many of the most intense challenges that parenthood can bring challenges us all to reexamine how we understand human difference. Perhaps the greatest gift of this monumental book, full of facts and full of feelings, is that it constantly makes one think, and think again.

An informative and moving book that raises profound issues regarding the nature of love, the value of human life and the future of humanity.

Solomon is a storyteller of great intimacy and ease… [He] creates something of enduring warmth and beauty: a quilt, a choir.

Andrew Solomon provides us with an unrivalled educational experience about identity groups in our society, an experience that is filled with insight, empathy and intelligence. Reading Far from the Tree is a mind-opening experience.

Solomon is in many ways the perfect writer for the subject – nuanced, thorough, humane, and a gifted stylist.

Far From the Tree is a book of extraordinary ambition… From a writer known primarily as a historian of sadness, this sweeping tribute to the joys of parental love can be startling and ecstatic.

A ground-breaking book

Brought to life by its intimate domestic voices, many of them people who ended up falling in love with children they never knew they wanted

A life-changing book

Nobody could read this extraordinary, moving book and not feel enlightened, but above all enlarged, by it.

I'd suggest this be made compulsory reading for an couple considering having a baby... This is a remarkable work: moving but never bathetic, challenging in parts but always worth the effort. I'd call it extraordinary - if only Solomon would let me.

A book brimming with poignancy

A fascinating examination of the accommodation of difference

You don't so much read Far from the Tree as cohabit with it; its stories take up residence in your head and heart, messily unpack themselves and refuse to leave

A generous, humane and — in complex and unexpected ways — compassionate book about what it means to be a parent

The book is about people and their experiences and it is rich with their strategies, smiles and sadnesses

Solomon writes movingly of the resources of support and empathy that he found among communities of the deaf, dwarfs, transgender children and people with Down’s syndrome

A catalogue of astonishing tenacity and unexpected joy that inevitably expands both our sympathies and sense of wonder at the immense variety of human experiences

This is a remarkable work: moving but never bathetic, challenging in parts, but always worth the effort

Nobody could read this extraordinary, moving book and not feel enlightened, but above all enlarged by it

Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever read. It is a masterpiece of research; giving an impressive insight into human relationships and our tolerance of those who are different. If everyone read this book the world would be a better place

A monumental and generous-hearted book, balanced between the universal and the particular, and gorgeously observed

Solomon’s compassionate study of these dozen loves that are, and are not, like each other, illuminates not so much the heroism of difficult kinds of love as the adaptability of every kind

A triumphant celebration of the power of parental love

Forces] the reader to meditate on a number of wrenching, often heart-breaking aspects of existence. And to mediate as well on questions of stigma and prejudice, callousness and cruelty, the widespread and extraordinary intolerance of human diversity, and the horrors that those attitudes and behaviours heap on the heads of those whose lives are already extraordinarily difficult, and on the head of those who love and care for them