RaveFinancial Times (UK)Cloud Cuckoo Land doubles down on the same techniques and high style [of All the Light We Cannot See]. Again, the parallel narratives are shuffled into short chapters giving the artful impression of having been loosely gathered together. Here, too, is the overt sentimentality that irked. But this time, in a book that celebrates the art of storytelling and champions the spellbound, the credulous and the naive, that style rings true ... Doerr’s great accomplishment is to create a vivid sense of the urgency of the present moment in each age ... Like the best fables, its message may seem trite, but the result is also ingenious, hopeful and totally absorbing.
Nick Hornby
MixedFinancial Times (UK)The capable crackle of his dialogue...propels the domestic drama forward at an easy pace, particularly effective in the voices of the children ... Lucy and Joseph are ambassadors for...a world, crammed with virtues ... Yet there is a problem: while it is clear they can overcome the prejudices that might drive them apart, Hornby never shows us exactly what draws them together. In his effort to illustrate his point, he leaves a hole where the heart of the novel should be—where a prudish author might draw a veil over the couple’s sex life, Hornby’s own coy fade-outs come whenever they are in danger of giving us an insight into their feelings for each other. As a result, the relationship feels allegorical and somewhat bloodless ... It is hard to reconcile this feeling of weightlessness with the emotional acuity of Hornby’s earlier work ... In the end, perhaps Just Like You is too much a novel of its times. After all, for those still mourning the shocks of 2016, waiting in hope and without much reason to expect a happy ending has come to feel like an end in itself.
