A subtle paean to the art of biography. It is a biographical experiment, but a deeply humane and sensitive one. It glows with the energy of lives investigated, restored, reanimated and celebrated.

Here, he has given us the distilled essence of biography and a fitting end to what he evokes as "the comedy of life".

As is always the case with Holroyd, the reader comes away equally inspired, equally curious, and lavishly entertained by a story-teller of the first rank

A small gem of humanity, curiosity and observation with a wonderful, rolling undercurrent of comedy

Scintillating... Holroyd's book is a sly, inconclusive and utterly bewitching dance through the elusive narrative echoes that make up the biographer's art

A prince among biographers

Beautifully and immaculately written

[The book] displays all the wisdom of a long life in a story linking the author with the lives of three extraordinary women connected over the centuries by an opulent Amalfi Coast villa

A touching story of human frailty

Humane and sensitive, his book glows with the energy of lives restored, reanimated and celebrated

A masterly blend of biography and memoir

A sly meditation on the biographer's art from a master of the genre

An accomplished biographer's tale, with a roaming narrative and many incidental pleasures on the way

While Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is rich in autobiographical detail, it is a wide and bold an experiment in the memoir form as any so far written... in writing that is astonishingly naked and brave, Winterson reveals the legacy of that difficult and painful childhood... Much of this book is laugh-out-loud funny... Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? is proudly, and sometimes painfully, honest.It is also, arguably, the finest and most hopeful memoir to emerge in many years and, as such, it should not be missed

It is clear from the first page of this shattering, brilliant memoir that the black humour of Oranges was there to disguise the true awfulness of her childhood. If things were bad in Winterson's fictional world, the reality was much, much worse... There is a sense at the end of this brave, funny, heartbreaking book that Winterson has somehow reconciled herself to her past... Her childhood was ghastly, as bad as Dickens's stint in the blacking factory, but it was also the crucible for her incendiary talent

Boasts everything that she does best: courage, ferocity and prose that soars

In memoir, honesty matters more than anything but, when married with humour, wit and elan vital of Jeanette Winterson's [book], it is a transformative force

The specifics of her early abuse is vivid, violent, and no less horrifying for its familiarity... If the memoir was begun as a final exorcism of the monster mother, it ends with a moving acceptance of her

Moved me deeply. [It] celebrates the redeeming power of the written word and is undercut with an irresistible humour born of residence in hardship

An extraordinary tragic-comic literary autobiography

There is something darkly Dickensian in the urgency and energy of her character and quest, in the acute, abrupt style of her self-presentation and in the extreme characters who have informed her life

Funny and scary mixed together, in the manner of the Brothers Grimm, sharp as a knife, round as a child's eye

Difficult, spirited, engaging... a resonant affirmation of the power of storytelling to make things better

Moving, turbulent

Shattering, brilliant memoir... Here childhood eas ghastly, as bad as Dickens's stint in the blacking factory, but it was also the crucible for her incendiary talent

Verbalyl dazzling, emotionally searing, compassionate and often hilarious memoir

Jeanette Winterson's new memoir appears to have been highly praised, rightly it seems to me, for its zest and candour and noted for a quality that some reviewers have seen as haste or even carelessness but which I see as her characteristic lively, pugnacious inventiveness.

The prose is breathtaking: witty, biblical, chatty and vigorous all at once. She defines the pursuit of happiness not as being content (which is "fleeting" and "a bit bovine"), but as the impulse to "swim upstream", the search for a meaningful life. This breathless, powerful book is that search.

Winterson is a bold author with a track record of writing imaginative transformation tales, and this is a work about the power of words, stories and books to give identity to a life that is in turns shocking, funny, warm and wise.

Engaging memoir.

There clear-eyed, drily witty, searingly moving memoir.

It does all that committed fans might hope... This is far funnier than the novel that made Winterson’s name... Brilliant book.

An inspirational memoir written in beautiful exact prose that celebrates the wildness of the ordinary. Winterson’s understanding of who she is… is both appallingly funny and deeply moving. Essential reading for anyone with a snitch of an interest in writing

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? burrowed deep and made me laugh and weep. This memoir has a great warmth and an intensity and honesty that is rare and the writing is exceptional

Winterson’s unconventional and winning memoir wrings humor from adversity as it describes her upbringing by a wildly deranged mother

It is in laying the truth bare in this unflinchingly honest and gripping memoir that Winterson really seems to find self-acceptance, love and even happiness