As if The Remains of the Day had been written by Kingsley Amis, The Waiter is a brilliantly exquisite view into an uproariously vigilant life of service and protocol. In Faldbakken’s skilled hands, a mordant, lonely waiter in a declining restaurant becomes a raw, scrupulous force, powering one of the most purely entertaining novels I've read in years. This book is a meal you won’t want to finish.

Faldbakken has a way with non-action. He builds a delicious tension between the paucity of events and the lavishness of the technique with which they are described.

A sly amuse bouche of a novel . . . its atmosphere and observations are deliciously rich.

Bringing to mind Mervyn Peake and Wes Anderson, with some of Nathanael West’s deadpan grotesque, this is a beguiling, quirky entertainment.

A quirky slice of life

Good fun - but you sense a more earnest point, too, as [the waiter] snatches rare downtime to scroll nervily through the jumble of disaster footage and cat videos flooding into his phone, making the faded grandeur of his 19th-century establishment a symbol of broader, post-internet worries over what we've lost.

An elegantly made parody, embossed with an abundance of humor, sharp observations and piercing social criticism . . . truly remarkable.

Utterly wonderful . . . a novel you will have a hard time putting out of your mind . . . a gem.

It seems so effortlessly and candidly written, but truly it numbers among the most uncompromising works I have read in very long time. A unique read many ought to treat themselves to.

Compelling, understated, casually brutal, and very cynical. I love it.

Troubling, kaleidoscopic, and hugely enjoyable

It's difficult to believe this is Frances Cha's first novel-she's a masterful storyteller. I couldn't put IF I HAD YOUR FACE down; I was riveted by the stories of four young women navigating life in the extreme, competitive environment of modern Seoul. I loved reading about a world I knew nothing about, and from the first page, it was clear Cha was the best possible guide. I highly recommend this novel.

Wonderful... unsettling and deeply affecting - the writing is beautifully spare, and captures with such clarity what it means for these four young women to be taught to hope for everything and yet continuously to receive nothing

If I Had Your Face is a vivid, eviscerating depiction of social realism in contemporary Seoul. Frances Cha renders gender and class struggles with forensic detail, in a luminous voice both knowledgeable and compelling.

I love the way Frances Cha rotates between mindsets to look at how beauty and privilege influence the way women live, whilst maintaining a sly lightness

Make way for Frances Cha, an entrancing new voice who guides us into the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul... I devoured it in a single sitting, and so will you.

I loved this book. It offers a fascinating window on a place and culture I knew little about, and yet from the first page it was intensely relatable - I recognised these women like friends, colleagues or sisters. Invigorating in its honesty and near-filmic in its descriptive power, If I Had Your Face is brilliantly-drawn tableau of the universalities of womanhood, the pressures we grapple with, and the way female bonds can carry us through.

Cha's striking first novel follows four young women in Seoul, South Korea trapped in a sphere of impossible beauty standards

A story of four women in Seoul and the way that economic and social realities determine the paths available to them

An intimate, panoramic debut... An enthralling read from the very first page.

A provoking, ultimately inspiring tale of women pushing back against oppressive customs both traditional and new . . . Frances Cha, like her quartet of narrators, has a rebel's heart

An endearing story of female friendship staged against a backdrop of elitism, sexism and the relentless quest for cosmetic perfection... Enthralling

An insightful, powerful story from a promising new voice

Cha's timely debut deftly explores the impact of impossible beauty standards and male-dominated family money on South Korean women

An eye-opening story of female friendship set against the brutal beauty standards of south Korea

Mesmerizing... weaves together the complexities and contradictions of modern-day Seoul, in an ultimately uplifting story of women living in defiance of oppressive customs

A gripping tale at once unfamiliar and unmistakably universal

A gripping portrait of four young women in South Korea... its focus on the tangled and complicated nature of female friendship is universally familiar and fascinating

Hypnotising... you won't want to put it down until the very last page

You'll find sisterhood at the heart of this ambitious book

Haddon writes with wrenching beauty about how the world inflicts itself on the disadvantaged... It's a testament to Haddon's prodigious gifts as a storyteller that this strange, epic adventure is so compulsively readable

A strange, tangled web of a story, drawing on ancient mythology and expanding into time travel… this innovative novel offers escapes into multiple worlds

Irresistible storytelling that slides between the present day and a mythic realm… A heady delight

The novel draws on Shakespeare and Greek legend, and is the sort of mile-a-minute adventure you can get lost in for hours without realising

[The Porpoise] confirms the sense of a gifted writer letting his talent off the leash at last… Mind-bending yet marvellously readable, it stakes Haddon’s claim to be one of the best writers in Britain right now

Haddon conveys all this with startling granularity: the stinking, seething Jacobean London traversed by the ghosts of Wilkins and Shakespeare… Haddon's novel creates, throughout, a looming sense that something very bad but not quite perceptible is in the process of unfolding: a terrible half-glimpsed fate that the characters are powerless to resist

The Porpoise begins as a page-turning thriller and soon shifts into something slippery and strange – but remains propulsive throughout

Mark Haddon’s best novel yet. The Porpoise begins as a propulsive thriller…and segues into a classical-world adventure that reinvents the story of Pericles in prose of a hallucinatory vividness

The Porpoise reworks legend with the compelling force of a thriller

[An] exquisite retelling of Shakespeare’s Pericles

Thrilling, dramatic and exquisitely written, The Porpoise combines myth and reality to enthralling effect