RaveEvening Standard (UK)The Billy Wilder of Jonathan Coe’s imagination is an old school gentleman, with a deliciously wicked side and a caustic wit. He is also a true film maker ... The book has a similar mix of pathos and silliness as the movies of the man who inspired it. There is a sadness as these former Hollywood titans confront their irrelevance in a new age, but also much joy as they find new ways to cause trouble ... A brisk 240 pages does not feel like enough time in that world of charming Golden Age rascals.
Charlie Gilmour
PositiveThe Evening Standard (UK)... moving, though often spiky ... Featherhood is an incisive, funny and at times traumatic study of the damage done by destructive father-son relationships and the struggle to smash generational cycles. You probably won’t want your own magpie after it, but you may give your dad a call.
Robert Harris
RaveThe Standard (UK)Set over five days, the pace is relentless. You can be staring at the exhaust of a rocket in the sky over Scheveningen in Holland, flick a page, and be in Chancery Lane, feeling the tiny change in air pressure that comes just before a supersonic missile lands. There are times, though, when Harris stops the story dead to hover over a detail that brings the horror of the V2 to life ... Written mostly during lockdown at a time of international political turmoil, Harris is delivering a warning about toxic futility and the ferocious propaganda needed to fuel it. His timing is, unlike the workings of the rockets he writes about, impeccable.
