Excellent, entertaining and ingenious ... Outstandingly displays the imaginative zest and subtlety of what Hensher rightly hails as "one of the richest and most accomplished moments in literary history".

Her economy, the boldness of her comic gift, her speed, her dramatic changes of the point of interest, her power to dissolve and reassemble a character and situation by a few lines

'The Daughters of the Late Colonel'...perhaps her greatest achievement, describes two spinsters whose overbearing father has just died. It flickers between comedy, menace, outlandish interludes and engulfing sorrow with consummate skill

She was not a kind or gentle writer. ['The Doll's House'] could be sentimental in the hands of a lesser writer, but she knew better than that. She spares nobody

There is something rapturous about her work: through her acute eye and cool, appraising descriptions, she has the power to distil the apparently inconsequential into frozen moments laden with significance

This wide-ranging collection of her [Mansfield's] short stories is a vivid reminder of what a brave and innovative write she was... Glittering gems -- read one every day

One of the foremost contemporary practitioners of the short story

Like her similarly gifted contemporaries Peter Taylor, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien...Alice Munro writes stories that have the density - moral, emotional, sometimes historical - of other writers' novels

A...writer of great sensitivity and delicacy. Her new collection of stories show no falling off in her gift for putting the ordinary into a sharp, clear persepective, seem very near and also very far away

She draws her readers irresistably into the undergrowth of other people's private lives

Atwood...writes infectiously... page after page proving that...[her] lavish literary talents remain wholly undiminished

[Old Babes in the Wood] showcase[s] Atwood's spiky wit and imagination

The 15 stories in this collection from the stellar Margaret Atwood are book-ended by the touching, tender, grief-tinged tales of Tig and Nell

There are authors we turn to because they can uncannily predict our future; there are authors we need for their skillful diagnosis of our present; and there are authors we love because they can explain our past. And then there are the outliers: those who gift us with timelines other than the one we're stuck in, realities far from home. If anyone has proved, over the course of a long and wildly diverse career, that she can be all four, it's Margaret Atwood . . . Long may she reign

As affecting as any of Atwood's strongest work

In Old Babes in the Wood, Margaret Atwood delivers her signature sci-fi with a human heart. It is a story collection that teems with playfulness and invention... reminding us of her skill in the short form

A highly personal collection

The Tig and Nell stories... are subtle and poignant, written in grief and from the heart

Devastating and thought-provoking in equal measure, you will find yourself thoroughly entertained - and we're sure you'll return to these again and again

Old Babes in the Wood... [is] a clear demonstration of her prevailing skill as a writer

As her short story collection Old Babes in the Wood debuts at the top of the fiction chart, Margaret Atwood can rest assured that she has reached literary legend status. It was one thing for The Handmaid's Tale to make it to No 1, but quite another for stories narrated by snails and aliens to do it

Her latest collection of short stories... proves once again she's also an impassioned observer of everyday people and their struggles, with a hilarious sense of humour

Each [story] is interesting in its own right...Atwood's imagination and mastery of storytelling is evident

[A] writer who is still so sparky and brilliant in the sudden ways she tips you into despair or delight. Whatever she's up to, I'll take more if it's going

Quietly devastating

Any new publication by the estimable Atwood...is an event and this collection of 15 short stories is no exception

Bracing, darkly funny and cheerfully unsentimental