Hilarious

A simple, moving, generous work

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away - with words. But the Lord giveth back, miraculously, in the form of this book and this family history

A true story, told with all the powerful authority and cunning narrative order of a major writer

His best work since The Counterlife

An extraordinary book about what it is to know a father

Roth masterfully creates a remarkable portrait of a life that, seen from the outside, does not seem singular or remarkable, but which Roth turns into something deeply emblematic about the last American century… a literary tour-de-force

Varoufakis has the greatest political virtues of all – courage and honesty

One of my few heroes. As long as people like Varoufakis are around, there still is hope

Superbly written ... he was – and is – right

An outstanding economist and political analyst

Astonishing … a reflection on the nature and meaning of power in our times

The Thucydides of our time

In these secular meditations, Knausgaard scratches away at the ordinary to reach the sublime – finding what’s in the picture, and what’s hidden

Knausgaard is an acute, sometimes squirmingly honest analyst of domesticity and his relationship to his family.

Very intimate and full of love

I am impressed by his responsiveness, the nuanced intelligence with which he speaks.

Courageous and inspirational, without a wasted word

What he makes me see is how the personal is a possession and that this is especially true for everyone involved in the Bataclan tragedy because the personal was – and still is – in danger of being swamped by the public story of international terrorism.

He had deliberately retreated from the world that was talking incessantly about the slaughter… If Antoine refused to give his hate to the men who killed his wife and so many others, he also refuses to give them space in his life and that of his now two-year-old son.

He looked at the words on the screen as the news networks competed to find words to describe the events: massacre, carnage, bloodbath. He wanted to scream, but couldn’t because of Melvil… Initially resistant to spending time with fellow mourners, Antoine discovered that there is a kind of brotherhood, a feeling of recognition, that can provide consolation.

[A] beautifully written memoir… It’s the hardest book you can pick up this year, but also the most affecting.

It is a personal account of the aftershock following the atrocity. Yet there is no gore, no torture, no scene-setting, no facts putting the Isis-claimed retaliation in context, no second-hand reports of what happened inside the theatre… Instead, it is simple and immediate, and is all about love and loss… This book may also be Leiris’s way of just holding it together. One feels he is writing as the man he was before that November day that changed everything… It is the literary equivalent of smelling her clothes every night before attempting to sleep.

A book for our times.

This book is a love song to Hélène, a promise to Melvil and a resolution not to be defeated by chaos and barbarity. It is a stunning mission statement.

This heartbreaking and beautifully written memoir lays bare the terrible chronology of grief, but it is also a testimony to the power of love and hope.

It’s an agonising account of those first few days, in which the lives of father and son changed forever. Despite the haste with which it was written, every word is chosen with care and charged with meaning, a raw and honest memoir of grief which can’t fail to move all who read it.