“We have a writer who is carving out an eminent oeuvre” – From a Low and Quiet Sea by Donal Ryan

"Inevitably, Joyce comparisons have been made with Ryan. I made them with The Spinning Heart, but it’s not necessarily the writing - because we shouldn’t be confusing these ‘voices’ as streams of consciousness - but instead the environment in which Ryan situates his characters. Religious imagery pervades the novel. Desires are moral quandaries and fathers are proxy and allusive. At one point when a fellow exile says to Farouk, ‘We glimpse the next world in our dreams anyway; it would be more than that, a dream I’d never awake,’ we feel like we’ve rewritten Stephen Dedalus’ formulation of history and nightmares." - Liam Bishop reviews Donal Ryan's From a Low & Quiet Sea

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“The creeping unease kept me going” – The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

It’s not every debut novelist that gets onto the Man Booker longlist, but then The Water Cure is not any old debut novel: it’s a strange, sinister tale that pulses with the suppressed rage of the powerless and the abused; it’s slow and creeping and full of righteous feminist fury. Which, you know, is probably exactly […]

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“The creeping unease kept me going” – The Water Cure by Sophie Mackintosh

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“If this doesn’t put Ben Myers on everyone’s radar…” – Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers

"“Since I was young I always wanted to be in the landscape,” Myers writes. That line, recalling the opening of Goodfellas, gives a strong sense of Under the Rock. It’s a book which doesn’t just discuss or describe landscape, but immerses you within it. Even that title invokes the idea of worms, mulch and soil. The things that dwell beneath a rock. Myers is both the person lifting it to see what lives underneath, and at the same time, another person caught underneath it..." - Daniel Carpenter reviews Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers

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“If this doesn’t put Ben Myers on everyone’s radar…” – Under the Rock by Benjamin Myers

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“It challenged my own racial biases” – An American Marriage by Tayari Jones #WomensPrize2019

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“It challenged my own racial biases” – An American Marriage by Tayari Jones #WomensPrize2019

"Roy and Celestial’s epistolary relationship dominates the middle section of the book and functions as its backbone. Although Celestial augments her letters by regular visits, the trips become onerous and emotionally devastating; her visits decrease. She is struggling both to build her up-scale doll-making business and carve out a life outside the shadow of Roy in prison. Jones refuses to cast Celestial in the role of dutiful wife who plays the victim and makes pilgrimages every visiting day. Although Celestial’s uncle is working on an appeal, Roy gets impatient and wants answers about the state of their marriage: “But now where are we? I know where you are and I know where I am, but where are WE?” Their relationship atrophies..." - Chris Oleson reviews An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

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“An obliteration of every sacred pillar” – Only Americans Burn In Hell by Jarett Kobek

"The final scene in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, depicting an unhinged Slim Pickens ‘riding the bomb’, is a fitting metaphor for Kobek – laughing all the way to annihilation. Compared to his previous novels though, the humour is darker, some riffs and tangents ‘heavy’. For the author, the election of Trump seems to have been one insult too far. And despite seeming not to care about the story, of playing fast and loose with his own narrative, that’s a façade – Kobek is a genius, masquerading as a slob. From Batman fanboys to Instagram to Literary Death Match to sex –the honesty, accuracy and comic genius on display, stops the reader dead." - Tamim Sadikali reviews Only Americans Burn In Hell by Jarett Kobek

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“An obliteration of every sacred pillar” – Only Americans Burn In Hell by Jarett Kobek

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“It’s missing whatever additive makes Harriet’s gingerbread so addictive” – Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

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“It’s missing whatever additive makes Harriet’s gingerbread so addictive” – Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi

"The gingerbread itself, as a metaphor (for too many things, perhaps), becomes wearying; it’s both over-used (nobody shuts up about it) and underutilised (the plot would be unaffected by its absence or replacement). More problematic, though, is the book’s structure: it meanders and drifts, much as if its final printed form was little changed from its author’s initial draft: a third could have been cut – the sentences tightened, the plotting made taut – and it would not have lost its otherworldliness, but it might have gained a productive tension" - Gingerbread by Helen Oyeyemi reviewed by Valerie O'Riordan

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“Compelling, hard-boiled and arresting” – The Parade by Dave Eggers

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“Compelling, hard-boiled and arresting” – The Parade by Dave Eggers

"It's all immensely readable, by which we mean to say that the sentences are short and straightforward, unflorid you might say, and the situations are easy to grasp (two men building a road in a foreign country, two men forced to work together without quite getting along), and yet Eggers is doing something complex: commenting on US foreign policy, showing a world we might think we are familiar with from the news but in a more sympathetic light, offering us different perspectives on what some people may regard as the other (as he has been doing for some time now)."

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“Bonkers” – The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg #MBI2019

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“Bonkers” – The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg #MBI2019

" A. The Faculty of Dreams is a literary fantasy based on Valerie Solanas, who achieved notoriety by shooting Andy Warhol B. “Few facts are known about Valerie Solanas and even to those this novel is not faithful. All characters in the novel should therefore be regarded as fictional, including Valerie Solanas herself.” C. It’s written in a combination of prose, theatre/movie script and alphabetised lists..." Lucy Chatburn reviews The Faculty of Dreams by Sara Stridsberg #MBI2019

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“Powerful and tragic” – You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

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“Powerful and tragic” – You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

"The writing is deft and compelling, illuminating a terrible history with quiet competence and humanity. Despite their flawed thinking, their skewed sense of the ‘natural order’, the characters are presented with a degree of sympathy – as the product of a blinkered heritage..." - Jackie Law reviews You Will Be Safe Here by Damian Barr

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“Not sustained” – Ordinary People by Diana Evans #WomensPrize2019

"At around halfway through the book I realised that the perceptive, amusing and dynamic pace had slowed and my interest was waning. When the pace picked up again the tone felt more soap opera than penetrative. There are arguments and foolish reactions. The couples splinter and reconcile. It is smoothly written but lacking the verve of the earlier portrayal..." - Jackie Law reviews Ordinary People by Diana Evans

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“Not sustained” – Ordinary People by Diana Evans #WomensPrize2019

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