RaveThe Guardian (UK)Hertz builds a wide-ranging, convincing argument that the way we live now is profoundly atomised—missing many of the casual and deeper human connections that used to be commonplace ... This book is a crucial call to arms ... If we could issue a reading list to 10 Downing Street, I’d put this book near the top.
Raven Leilani
PositiveThe Times (UK)... darkly entertaining ... gives the novel a slightly ungrounded, directionless feel, familiar from other works by millennial and Generation Z writers; perhaps it’s a reflection of the tumultuous period in which they have grown up. Events in the book sometimes seem at odds with how real people behave...There is an unrealness to the territory, but there’s also a gleeful absurdity in Leilani’s topsy-turvy, chaotic world ... Her writing can be mercilessly sharp and funny ... a promising debut ... There is little flab in the novel and your attention is unlikely to wander. Each paragraph is surprising ... Leilani writes with enjoyable confidence. If at times you feel you are hanging on to the back of a bus with no idea where it’s going, at least the journey never ceases to be interesting.
Emily St. John Mandel
PositiveThe Times (UK)... an elegant, haunting story ... I classified it as a thriller at first, in part thanks to its eerie cover, but it turns out to be something more nuanced: although we start with a woman falling from a ship, and end by finding out how she went overboard, the death ultimately is almost peripheral. Mandel introduces a large cast with their own well-realised preoccupations ... I was so absorbed by each of their perspectives that I was bereft then to have them drift in and out of the novel, as every character does, and indeed the way the narrative hops between locations, people and moments in time may try the patience of some readers. But Mandel’s storytelling is imaginative ... Throughout the book people see ghosts and visions, but Mandel never indulges fully in the supernatural; instead, it’s a unique rumination on guilt, grief and regret.
Kate Elizabeth Russell
PositiveThe Times (UK)While peering into the experience of a molested teenager can’t be described as enjoyable, it’s a credit to Kate Elizabeth Russell that her debut novel, My Dark Vanessa, is as gripping as it is skin-crawling ... While the style of the book, written largely from the point of view of a teenager, at times feels reminiscent of teen fiction, the subject matter is cleverly handled.
