A fine and profoundly intelligent novel, written by an author who balances big ideas with human emotion. Wistful, yearning and wise.
A richly melancholic novel of ideas that celebrates the pity, the comedy and the beauty of
our brief lives.
Faulks’s most poignant love story yet.
A yearning, wistful, lovelorn novel, intent on exploring the price of being human.
Faulks on his best form.
A story spanning decades and countries, an epic affair buffeted by the winds of fate and history.
It is beautifully written and the story is thoroughly compelling.
Snow Country is a love story, but one made complex and uncertain to the last page by politics and the intellectual ferment of Vienna.
A tale of love – lost and found – and the strength of the human spirit.
Beautiful writing.
Superb… Weaves winningly between the present and the second world war.
Paris Echo is brimming with Faulks’s deep affection for Paris.
Both thoughtful and thought-provoking.
The prowess of his storytelling makes him a graceful guide.
An exquisite book… Deeply affecting.
Paris Echo doesn’t disappoint… Faulks is doing what he does best.
Intelligent, moving… A love letter to Paris.
A stimulating read.
Intelligent, humorous and thoroughly enjoyable.
An intriguing guide to the many layers of Parisien life.
Paris Echo is an enjoyable and highly readable novel.
There is much to learn from Paris Echo.
Master storytelling… An intriguing and moving story.
There is humour and humanity in this bold, perceptive novel.
Faulks excels at creating well-rounded characters.
Immersive.
Faulks is a fine descriptive writer and evokes Paris splendidly.
A masterpiece . . . a terrific novel, humming with ideas, knowing asides, shafts of sunlight, shouts of laughter and moments of almost unbearable tragedy.
Faulks gets better and better with every book. This is surely one of the year’s best novels.
Every story within this novel bears the imprint of an extremely accomplished writer.
Sublime . . . a hauntingly beautiful exploration of the frailties and strengths of the human heart.
Within these pages we find some of his best writing.
Faulks on Fiction is not intended as a formal history of the British novel, but it is much more worthwhile and enjoyable than any history of the novel I have read.
Faulks on Fiction is a fine reminder of why you love the characters you do; and it will serve as an introduction to new friends, too.
Faulks on Fiction revels in the creation of vital, unruly characters.
Full of personal anecdotes and warm-blooded opinions.
It is impossible not to enjoy Faulks’s vitality, his rich detailing, language and timing.
Readers will race through the pages like bankers through cash.
Unforgivably witty.
Faulks’s most daring creation.
Thrillingly moving . . . Most novelists will never write lines that speak to the heart so effectively; for Faulks that seems the easiest thing of all.
Electrifying… [Engleby] hangs together beautifully.
Both tense and affecting . . . At the end one releases the breath one has unconsciously been holding . . . A modern epic.
Faulks is a fine writer, and here his characters possess a depth and truth which make them live beyond the page.
Wildly exciting . . . a classic.
The spare narrative hides a commitment to his subject which pulls you in and leaves you gasping for these lost lives.
Excruciatingly powerful.
Novelists are masters of the imagination. And Faulks is beyond doubt a master.
Wonderful . . . Riveting . . . Masterful.
Beautifully written and extraordinarily moving.
A rare achievement, a supremely accomplished piece of work.
This moving and profound novel is perfectly constructed, and admirable in its configurations of place and period.
An unusual and moving novel in which courage and abnegation are pitted against illicit but total love . . . a poised and well-judged work.
[A] powerful story of love, conscience, will and desire.
This is literature at its very best: a book with the power to reveal the unimagined, so that one’s life is set in a changed context. I urge you to read it.
With Birdsong Faulks has created a mesmerizing story of love and war . . . This book is so powerful that as I finished it I turned to the front to start again.
An overpowering and beautiful novel . . . Ambitious, outrageous, poignant, sleep-disturbing, Birdsong is not a perfect novel, just a great one.
So powerful is this recreated past that you long to call Birdsong perfect.
One of the finest novels of the last forty years.
The best novelist of his generation.
Sebastian Faulks’s third and most magnificent novel is a ‘feel-good’ experience from cover to cover.
Truly distinguished writing, produced with flair and panache but also with serious thought… the most impressive, but also the most enjoyable, novel of the year.
Faulks rises to his own challenge . . . This is subtle book, full of glancing allusions and sly humour.
He is the best novelist of his generation.
Highly readable, entertaining and informative.
Faulks is extremely good at capturing the voice of another century, and this discourse reads with great conviction, as well as being engrossing . . .
An entertaining and always shiftily gripping tale of menace.
A most impressive first novel.
Everything a thriller should be.
That a literary novelist of Faulks’s calibre should take on Fleming’s mantle is a fitting tribute to one of Britain’s greatest thriller writers.
