A mesmerising jumble of jokes, drawings and elderly gripes… All human life – and death – is here in this lucky dip of memories and fears, irritations and idle thoughts… [Time For Lights Out] has black humour galore…and, as always, Briggs’s drawings have a touch of magic about them, conjuring human beings and their foibles out of a few precious lines.

[Time for Lights Out is] direct and personal…on the tragi-comedy of growing old. [Briggs] looks on ageing with a beady but sympathetic eye…and mordant humour all the way through… there are plenty of excellent jokes in this book.

Many congratulations to The Oldie's Raymond Briggs on his elegiac new book, Time for Lights Out. The great author and illustrator takes a funny, sombre, bittersweet approach to old age, with fond thoughts of his grandchildren, parents, childhood and his partner Liz. The book is illustrated with his characteristic understanding of real life... Bliss.

A beloved genius of storytelling and illustration.

A powerful and nostalgic memoir

The great thing about this memoir of boyhood is how unportentous it is for the most part

The lasting impression left by the self-portrait is of an abiding loneliness, nostalgia, and loss, leavened by humour and an unfeigned humility

The humiliations and joys of childhood, magnified by time, are delicately revisited

The elliptical prose style that earned Saramago the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 imbues these snapshots with a sense of time irrecoverably lost as the author, who died earlier this year, reprises the significant episodes of his youth. Any lack of drama will be of little consequence to admirers of Saramago, whose mostly rural vignettes reflect the emotional pitch of an illustrious literary career

Beautiful, wild, painfully honest, hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking... a soulful, truthful homage to a life lived with appetite, intensity and wonder.

Finally the book that single mothers across the globe have been waiting for... Funny, dark and true.

Reading The Hungover Games is a bit like having a new boyfriend: you think about it every second you're not with it and long for everyone to go away so that you can just lie down with it and savour its gorgeous, funny rudeness.

Gorgeous, unflinching, tender, sad, affirming and cackle-worthy. You don't need to be a mother, have one in your life or hope to become one, for the razor-sharp observations chronicled here to ring true.

I adored this debut memoir... Freewheeling, hugely funny... and genuinely soul-mining.

Ebullient, playful and creative... By turns caustic, astute and very, very funny.

This is the first time I've read anything about motherhood that didn't bore me... It's all really unconventional but laugh-out-loud funny.

Frank and fearless... a glorious validation to all parents doing it solo.

Hits that sweet spot between laugh-out-loud funny, with its accounts of first dates, LA wackiness and personal mishaps, and a lyrical lament for a life of paternity tests, an absent father and the absence of raves.

Joyfully crude and hilarious... Heawood is refreshingly unapologetic.

Achingly tender and snort-inducingly funny.

Thought-provoking and insightful.

Unflinchingly honest, emotionally raw, and surprisingly sweet.

Raw and funny, Heawood’s memoir celebrates the messiness of life and motherhood with boldness, panache, and unexpected moments of real poignancy. An uncensored and eccentric delight.

Heawood writes with warmth and wit about life as a single mother.

Rejoice! One of our favourite journalists Sophie Heawood – known for her hilarity and honesty – publishes her first book this year. It's a memoir about being a single mother when you haven't quite worked out how to look after yourself.

[Heawood] shares her story with huge wit and sharp observation.

A tender and hilarious account of her life as a single mother.

This [is an] incredibly candid and often LOLs memoir about how it feels to raise a baby on your own when you're more into negronis than nappies.

Reading Heawood's often outrageous and occasionally undignified anecdotes was the perfect tonic during the second national lockdown. Though hilariously funny, her story of accidental pregnancy is also tender and poignant, with her accounts of motherhood feeling far less common through a single-parent lens.

A tender and funny account of single parenthood

Packed with humour and honesty, it's also tender, moving and relatable, detailing Heawood's own evolution and growth alongside her young daughter's, and the highs and lows of solo parenting.

Clover Stroud writes with such startling vivacity and honesty about motherhood, this book has its own heartbeat. It crackles with life - its messiness, darkness, and joy. I loved it.

Her descriptions leap off the page... It's the honesty that makes this book so compelling.

Clover Stroud managed to write down all of the mania in one place, making me shed a tear and honk with laughter…she writes so eloquently about all we lose as well as gain through our children.

'Clover Stroud is a wonderful writer of the most colourful prose

My Wild and Sleepless Nights by Clover Stroud is a robust, raw and rare celebration of motherhood that had me laughing out loud one moment and crying the next.

The story of 3 college friends, if you're a fan of Sally Rooney, you'll love EXPECTATION

A grown-up, honest take on female camaraderie. Packed with talking points

Fantastic. Beautifully written, sharply observed and saying important things

BOOK OF THE YEAR. It's the book we're all buying for our sisters and besties this Christmas.

Brings to vivid life that particular tension one feels just before middle age, when it begins to become clear that life won’t end up looking exactly they way we thought it would. An outstanding novel

Anna Hope's beautifully observed study of female friendship is a moving account of the collision between aspiration and reality

Fantastically well-realised portrait of female friendship's joys and pains from an exciting new voice in British fiction