...when restless innovators such as Ali Smith, Nicola Barker, Sarah Hall, Will Self, Jon McGregor, Deborah Levy, Gwendoline Riley and Eimear McBride set much of the agenda for fiction...Kirsty Gunn belongs in this exemplary few...
Financial Times A really superb, very readable novel.
Guardian A restless innovator ... Trumps even her own past work in its audacity ... ... Read moreGuts and cheek to spare ... Reminded me of James's serpentine late style as much as it did the prose of Virginia Woolf or Gunn's compatriot, Katherine Mansfield ... Caroline's Bikini nods to its Modernist ancestors but never grovels to them ... Gunn's serious playfulness will make you think again about every convention of fiction we lazily take for granted ... Nothing much may happen. But the feeling
and the writing
overflows.
Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times Kirsty Gunn is a deep thinker; a maverick, an entertainer, and a great writer.
Deborah Levy [Her writing is] a perfect, witty riposte to that casual dismissal, and a lesson in how much goes on beneath the surface of everyday life ... Gunn traces hidden emotional topographies with insight and attentiveness to form and language which marks her previous work ... delicate, unsettling and revelatory.
Observer An author of undeniable talent.
Sunday Times Gunn has always been a notably original writer ... Her writing is extraordinarily controlled, rich, and melodic ...
Guardian '[a] bold and brainy enterprise.'
Observer Gunn's playful and endearing voice makes it a joy to read. Who knew postmodernism could be this fun?
Tatler Remarkable ... demands that readers put themselves into the same headspace as they would before embarking on a novel by, say, William Faulkner, James Joyce or Woolf.
Financial Times Gunn has written a blissfully anarchic and inspiring novel about the futility of writing; a delightful paradox in itself.
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