Intricately worked and sumptuously inlaid novel...seethes and pulses with an entangled life, of the mind and the senses alike. Colour and sensation flood Byatt's writing...she is a master-potter, or magic-working puppeteer
Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Intricately worked and sumptuously inlaid novel...seethes and pulses with an entangled life, of the mind and the senses alike. Colour and sensation flood Byatt's writing...she is a master-potter, or magic-working puppeteer
Boyd Tonkin, Independent

Byatt is at her brilliant best...The fantasy here is dark and frightening, going to the edge of what a child can bear. Alongside such rich, strange meat, Harry Potter starts to feel like a vanilla snack for scaredy cats
Standpoint

Byatt is at her brilliant best...The fantasy here is dark and frightening, going to the edge of what a child can bear. Alongside such rich, strange meat, Harry Potter starts to feel like a vanilla snack for scaredy cats
Standpoint

Superlatively displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip...sizzling with ideas and alive with imaginative energy, too … this is the most stirring novel AS Byatt has written since Possession
Sunday Times

Superlatively displays both enormous reach and tremendous grip...sizzling with ideas and alive with imaginative energy, too … this is the most stirring novel AS Byatt has written since Possession
Sunday Times

It’s success is as a novel of ideas, forcefully and often memorably expressed, while the story follows darkening fortunes into a chastened postwar world
Helen Dunmore, The Times

It’s success is as a novel of ideas, forcefully and often memorably expressed, while the story follows darkening fortunes into a chastened postwar world
Helen Dunmore, The Times

Compelling…strenuously inclusive and also tremendously enriching – an intricate tale, energetically fashioned from sturdy strands of material, by “a spinning fairy in the attic”, an indefatigable storyteller
Irish Times

Compelling…strenuously inclusive and also tremendously enriching – an intricate tale, energetically fashioned from sturdy strands of material, by “a spinning fairy in the attic”, an indefatigable storyteller
Irish Times

Astonishing power and resonance
Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

Astonishing power and resonance
Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph

Light More than a novel, this is a historical primer, discursive, shimmering with colour and texture, containing stories within stories and giving walk-on parts to luminaries of the age…For fans of Byatt this is better than Possession. A truly great novel.
Daily Express

Light More than a novel, this is a historical primer, discursive, shimmering with colour and texture, containing stories within stories and giving walk-on parts to luminaries of the age…For fans of Byatt this is better than Possession. A truly great novel.
Daily Express

Light and lustrous, commanding and transporting, The Children’s Book is superb
Daily Mail

Light and lustrous, commanding and transporting, The Children’s Book is superb
Daily Mail

It certainly compares to its popular predecessor [Possession] in daring and scope and … is its equivalent in terms of storytelling and readability. For all of its more than 600 pages it is rarely less than totally absorbing – and often very moving
Lorna Bradbury, Daily Telegraph

It certainly compares to its popular predecessor [Possession] in daring and scope and … is its equivalent in terms of storytelling and readability. For all of its more than 600 pages it is rarely less than totally absorbing – and often very moving
Lorna Bradbury, Daily Telegraph

The Children’s Book bests even its predecessors
Julian Evans, Prospect

The Children’s Book bests even its predecessors
Julian Evans, Prospect

beautiful, bracing and bold. Her handling of dialogue is unfussy, precise and rude. This is a moving book. Its words are beautifully chosen…AS Byatt is Gaudi and Christopher Wren rolled in to one
Tom Adair, The Scotsman

beautiful, bracing and bold. Her handling of dialogue is unfussy, precise and rude. This is a moving book. Its words are beautifully chosen…AS Byatt is Gaudi and Christopher Wren rolled in to one
Tom Adair, The Scotsman

extraordinary rich book is superbly embedded in the thoughts and beliefs and feelings if the period—and indeed in its interior décor
Caroline Moore, The Spectator

extraordinary rich book is superbly embedded in the thoughts and beliefs and feelings if the period—and indeed in its interior décor
Caroline Moore, The Spectator

magnificent loquacity… gripping and often deeply affecting
Pamela Norris, Literary Review

magnificent loquacity… gripping and often deeply affecting
Pamela Norris, Literary Review

The sort of high concept rarefied intellectual fiction we’d expect from, well, A S Byatt. Posession: the next generation
Sophie Gee, Financial Times

The sort of high concept rarefied intellectual fiction we’d expect from, well, A S Byatt. Posession: the next generation
Sophie Gee, Financial Times

Byatt’s novel combines meaty ideas with the breathless page-turning propulsion of an old-fashioned saga…Brimming with intelligence and sensuality, this is the perfect summer book
Claire Allfree, Metro

Byatt’s novel combines meaty ideas with the breathless page-turning propulsion of an old-fashioned saga…Brimming with intelligence and sensuality, this is the perfect summer book
Claire Allfree, Metro

dense and intense, highly decorated and richly populated….you wonder at her thirst for reading and knowledge and desire to communicate…[and] her prodigious appetite for storytelling…remarkable, peerless, and wilfully and delightfully and unapologetically intellectual, the kind of writer who makes you marvel at what she manages to put on the page
Alan Taylor, The Herald

dense and intense, highly decorated and richly populated….you wonder at her thirst for reading and knowledge and desire to communicate…[and] her prodigious appetite for storytelling…remarkable, peerless, and wilfully and delightfully and unapologetically intellectual, the kind of writer who makes you marvel at what she manages to put on the page
Alan Taylor, The Herald

Byatt has not just produced an engrossing family saga but an anthem for a generation
Max Davidson, The Mail on Sunday1

Byatt has not just produced an engrossing family saga but an anthem for a generation
Max Davidson, The Mail on Sunday1

You can count on A.S. Byatt to produce an engrossing saga.
Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler

You can count on A.S. Byatt to produce an engrossing saga.
Sebastian Shakespeare, Tatler

The best thing she’s ever done.
Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph Summer Reads

The best thing she’s ever done.
Philip Hensher, Daily Telegraph Summer Reads

Byatt’s novel – her first for seven years – is rarely less than totally absorbing and often very moving.
Daily Telegraph Summer Reads

Byatt’s novel – her first for seven years – is rarely less than totally absorbing and often very moving.
Daily Telegraph Summer Reads

Byatt being Byatt – which is to say one of the cleverest writers of her generation – her latest novel is anything but childish … The Children’s Book is one of the most grown-up you will read all year … Byatt is at her brilliant best marshalling her large cast into a series of set pieces … The personal stories are played out against a meticulously-realised bigger picture … It is in fact a sexy book, full of erotic longing patchily fulfilled. Byatt is never better than when describing Victorians trying to case of their inhibitions along with their clothes and tripping themselves up in the process … The fantasy here is dark and frightening, going to the edge of what a child can bear. Alongside such rich, strange meat, Harry Potter does indeed start to feel like a vanilla snack for scaredy cats.
Standpoint

Byatt being Byatt – which is to say one of the cleverest writers of her generation – her latest novel is anything but childish … The Children’s Book is one of the most grown-up you will read all year … Byatt is at her brilliant best marshalling her large cast into a series of set pieces … The personal stories are played out against a meticulously-realised bigger picture … It is in fact a sexy book, full of erotic longing patchily fulfilled. Byatt is never better than when describing Victorians trying to case of their inhibitions along with their clothes and tripping themselves up in the process … The fantasy here is dark and frightening, going to the edge of what a child can bear. Alongside such rich, strange meat, Harry Potter does indeed start to feel like a vanilla snack for scaredy cats.
Standpoint

Late in the 19th century three boys meet in what is later to become the V & A museum…Their entwined lives lie at the heart of this brilliant inquiry into art, family and morality at the turn of the century
The Guardian Saturday Review, SUMMER READS

Late in the 19th century three boys meet in what is later to become the V & A museum…Their entwined lives lie at the heart of this brilliant inquiry into art, family and morality at the turn of the century
The Guardian Saturday Review, SUMMER READS

Ambition, scholarship and exquisite prose
Joanna Briscoe, Grazia

Ambition, scholarship and exquisite prose
Joanna Briscoe, Grazia

Easily the best novel Byatt has written since Possession … displays enormous reach and tremendous grip
Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Easily the best novel Byatt has written since Possession … displays enormous reach and tremendous grip
Peter Kemp, Sunday Times

Wonderfully enjoyable
Christina Koning, The Times

Wonderfully enjoyable
Christina Koning, The Times

Enjoyable
Emily Firetog, Irish Times

Enjoyable
Emily Firetog, Irish Times

Byatt’s first book for seven years takes on the artistic themes of the day in exhilarating detail
Vanessa Thorpe, Observer

Byatt’s first book for seven years takes on the artistic themes of the day in exhilarating detail
Vanessa Thorpe, Observer

Majestic and immensley ambitious novel…[a] monument of a novel
Neal Ascherson, New York Review

Majestic and immensley ambitious novel…[a] monument of a novel
Neal Ascherson, New York Review

My favourite book of 2009 for its scope, its narrative energy and its sensitivity to the strangeness of familiar-seeming things
Lawrence Norfolk, Times Literary Supplement

My favourite book of 2009 for its scope, its narrative energy and its sensitivity to the strangeness of familiar-seeming things
Lawrence Norfolk, Times Literary Supplement

Totally engrossing
Lynn Roberts, The Tablet

Totally engrossing
Lynn Roberts, The Tablet

AS Byatt’s novel could surely be exhibited as a case of superlative novelistic design
Anita Sethi, Indepedent on Sunday

AS Byatt’s novel could surely be exhibited as a case of superlative novelistic design
Anita Sethi, Indepedent on Sunday

Magnificent, intricate novel… Byatt is an enchanter
Daily Telegraph

Magnificent, intricate novel… Byatt is an enchanter
Daily Telegraph

Imaginative brio and intellectual zest winningly combine in a book that sizzles with acute perceptions
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times Christmas pick

Imaginative brio and intellectual zest winningly combine in a book that sizzles with acute perceptions
Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times Christmas pick

Heartfelt and acute
Erica Wagner, The Times Christmas books

Heartfelt and acute
Erica Wagner, The Times Christmas books

Easily the best thing Byatt’s written since Possession, her panoramic novel focuses on a bohemian colony of writers and potters in early 20th-century Kent
Sunday Times Summer Reading

Easily the best thing Byatt’s written since Possession, her panoramic novel focuses on a bohemian colony of writers and potters in early 20th-century Kent
Sunday Times Summer Reading

It’s absorbing, lush and full of thoughts, ideas and characters who live with you.
Hannah McGill, Sunday Herald, Christmas round up

It’s absorbing, lush and full of thoughts, ideas and characters who live with you.
Hannah McGill, Sunday Herald, Christmas round up

Amy Wooding 04 October 2010

I am seventeen years old, and there is a lot in the world I am yet to discover to inspire me. But this book has filled me with inspiration, to chase the dreams I have to be a great writer, much like Olive Wellwood.
I also live on the Romney Marsh, and I had great fun imagining my home town in Edwardian times!
I love a novel that can get a reaction from it's readers, and this is one of those novels. I have felt a lot of emotion for most of the characters in this book, from pity to hate!
I will definitely be shoving this book in a lot of people's faces, and singing it's praises.

vixa delic 23 December 2010

This is truly a novel to savour - to sit down with on a quiet evening, with a glass of wine and a comfy chair. Spanning generations, this is the story of a family - and all it's secrets. The title comes from the books famous author Olive writes for all of her children during in their wonderful childhood in the Kent countryside. But as they grow up, secrets begin to come out and the children begin to rebel against their parents - but as a reader you can just see the terror of the First World War looming waiting to destroy their idyllic innocence. Truly, a stunning novel.