I liked it very much indeed, more than anything for a long time.

England's prose has the tough, spare elegance of steel scaffolding. His vocabulary is wide, and used with arresting precision. The speed of the narrative is impeccably controlled – long slogs over country, moments of blind panic, passages of demoralizing inactivity, hair-raising evasions, all building up to a central set-piece in a burning field... A brilliant achievement

Shocked through with dramatic tension

Outstanding … I doubt if there has been a more impressive debut since William Golding’s

It is full of slapstick comedy, despite gut-wrenching depictions of dope sickness, the futility of war and PTSD... [Walker] writes dialogue so musical and realistic you’ll hear it in the air around you.

After page one, only the faint-hearted will manage to put down this brilliant screech from a life of war, crime and addiction, a powerful book that declares the arrival of a real writer who has made art out of anguish.

Exceptional… This is a book that feels casually hilarious if you read a couple of pages; if you read a chapter it becomes impressive; and by the time you’ve finished, it’s devastating.

One of the year’s most talked-about books… Cherry has been compared with Hemingway, Denis Johnson and Salinger’s Holden Caulfield, and to that you could add Jack Kerouac … This rough, raw and poetic novel gives an unforgettable voice to a hollowed-out America in the grip of the opioid crisis.

Nico Walker’s first book has been compared to The Catcher in the Rye… A mix of deadpan funny, gently mournful and, at times, absolutely harrowing, Cherry is… the kind of literary debut authors dream about. Minus the being in prison part.

[Cherry] presents a searing indictment of both war and the indifference of the society in whose name war is fought… In this troubling and powerful book, Walker has surely created one of the most distinctive and memorable novels of the year.

A buzzsaw of a novel... Bracingly original.

The narrator [of Cherry is] one of the most fascinating characters in recent fiction.

Really compelling... [Cherry] just shoots forwards in the most extraordinary way... [Walker] is incredibly good on the absolute corporeality of the [Iraq War]. That was brilliantly done.

With an unforgettable voice, the narrator relates his hellacious military service in Iraq, PTSD, and descent into addiction with desperation and propulsive intensity, sustained by a dark humor and associative structure evocative of Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.

Someone once said there are only two things worth writing about, love and death. Nico Walker may know more about these two subjects than 99.9% of fiction writers working today. Read Cherry instead of the latest piece of fluff – it might be the only time when you truly feel a writer is actually baring their soul to you.

A raw coming-of-age story in reverse... Cherry touches on some of the darkest chapters of recent American history.

Harrowing, heartbreaking, and sadly funny. Cherry is a terrific book, a cool book, and Walker’s voice is keen and vigilant and uniquely his own.

I’m so jealous about the writing in Cherry that it makes me sick. Nico Walker has written one of those perfect books in the most outrageous voice that I’ve come across in years... Nico Walker is one of the best writers alive.

A compelling new work of fiction.

Walker’s raw confessional novel, aptly compared to Jesus’ Son and Reservoir Dogs, is a devastating example of art imitating life.

One of the summer’s most exciting literary breakthroughs, Cherry is a profane, raw, and harrowingly timely account of the effects of war and the perils of addiction.

The rare work of literary fiction by a young American that carries with it nothing of the scent of an MFA program... The voice Walker has fashioned has a lot in common with the one Denis Johnson conjured for his masterpiece Jesus’ Son... A novel of searing beauty.

Walker tells the story in a biting staccato, by turns shrewd, heartfelt, and repellent... Cherry’s descriptions of Army life are as acerbic and unsparing—and often darkly hilarious—as the boot-camp scenes from Full Metal Jacket.

Unsparingly raw and utterly gripping. This is an astonishingly good novel, written by someone who clearly has a gift for storytelling. Walker’s characters, even minor players and walk-ons, are beautifully drawn. His dialogue rings achingly true... A masterpiece.

Cherry, Nico Walker’s outstanding debut, is a hard-hitting, ghoulishly funny novel about drug addiction, war and bank robbery.

Heartbreaking, unadorned, radically absent of pretense, Cherry is the debut novel America needs now, a letter from the frontlines of opioid addiction and, almost subliminally, a war story.

Nico Walker’s Cherry is a wrenching, clear-eyed stare-down into the abyss of war, addiction and crime, a dark tumble into scumbaggery, but it’s also deeply humane and truly funny. That is one of the reasons I love it so much: it makes you laugh and ache at the same time, in the manner of the great Denis Johnson.

One of the most exciting new American novelists.

Heavily indebted to the profane blood, guts, bullets, and opiate-strewn absurdities dreamed up by Thomas McGuane, Larry Brown, and Barry Hannah, Cherry tells a story that feels infinitely more real, and undeniably tougher than the rest.

A bruising dispatch from the frontline of the American opioid crisis… the final quarter [of Cherry] rushes by in a cold sweat.

[An] incendiary debut… Nico Walker writes with real rhythm, exhibiting a poet’s discrimination about adjectival choice and the relative length of clauses. It is a rare and remarkable achievement to turn such suffering into a novel of such finely calibrated beauty.

A gritty, addictive read.

I think everyone should read it – it is so horrific.

A well-received return to form

Astonishingly bold novel… [It] is Amis’s best work in years

Amis’s best work since Money