Bursting with vitality and variety, it's a tour de force . . . fizzes with the qualities - characters who almost leap off the page with authenticity, speech and body language wonderfully caught - that, for more than half a century, have won her such admiration and affection
- Peter Kemp * Sunday Times *
As always, Tyler is a magician, able to conjure up, in a handful of sentences, such endlessly complicated things as the comical messiness of family life . . . You finish her novels feeling closer to life, and closer to other people
- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday *
Almost unbearably poignant . . . a moving and perceptive story about one man's inability to connect with others and his gradual move towards greater self-fulfilment
- Charlotte Heathcote * Sunday Express *