David Sexton on The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy (Evening Standard)
‘It all feels very GCSE … there’s too much verbal prancing, too little that’s original being said, particularly when the poems are not personal. You end the book thinking that if this is poetry, it’s a trivial art. But it is not.’
David Annand on Damned by Chuck Palahniuk (Literary Review)
‘Part Judy Blume homage, part Wiki-guide to theological anthropology, part metafictional meditation on the autonomy of imagined characters, part Breakfast Club pastiche, part juvenile fantasy romp and part Brangelina character assassination: it manages, beyond all reasonable expectations, to be worse than this makes it sound.’
Nicholas Tucker on The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Independent)
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