The fiction equivalent of a brisk walk followed by a hot buttered crumpet: fresh, invigorating, comforting and heartening
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Few writers give more pleasure and joy to their readers. Trapido has such a gift for seeing the world’s weight so clearly and writing about it so lightly
- KAMILA SHAMSIE,
It is the perfect book. Beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, and utterly ageless. The first time I read it, I knew within pages that <i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i> was going to become my favourite novel. The second time, that this brilliant, funny, intensely moving work is everything I aspire to as a writer. Every reading since, that devotion to Barbara Trapido is my only true requisite in a friend
- MEG MASON,
Can we talk about Barbara Trapido? I love those books so much … So charming, they’re absolutely gorgeous. For me, reading Barbara Trapido is like entering a entirely different world … I’d recommend everyone read <i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i>
- MARIAN KEYES,
Still as fresh and funny after all those years; the perfect coming-of-age novel
- CLARE CHAMBERS,
Why did it take me so long to discover the singular joys of Barbara Trapido's novels? Why, for so many years, had I missed these witty, soulful, heartbreaking, expansive, brilliant tales? What have I been wasting my time doing? Reading books that AREN'T perfect? Never again!
- ELIZABETH GILBERT,
I am wildly jealous of anyone who hasn’t yet read Barbara Trapido. They have yet to discover the joy of her often hilarious and always profound world; they are about to meet her intricate cast of recurring characters; they will soon have those glorious moments of Trapidean epiphany when they realise – oh! – the boy in this book is the child of a woman in that book. There is no-one like Barbara. Buy all her books, quick, and then sit back, crack the spines, and prepare to marvel
- MAGGIE O'FARRELL,
<i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i> is the book we need right now: smart, funny, honest, painful and true. It is the best possible company as we make our way through this difficult world. I love it
- ANN PATCHETT,
A moving, intense, earthy and witty book, both illuminating and extraordinary as a first novel
THE TIMES
She is a writer I feel genuinely evangelical about, and I think she's criminally underread. I'd honestly go to Speaker's Corner and stand on a box and read out passages from <i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i>, such is my love for it
- DAISY BUCHANAN,
The exuberance, the humour, the gritty toughness and the sadness ... I really love the way she writes
- MIRIAM TOEWS,
I adored <i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i>. It is redolent of classics like<i> The Constant Nymph </i>with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine
- SOPHIE DAHL,
<i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i> is one of the funniest, warmest, sexiest, sharpest novels I’ve ever read. I must have read it a dozen times: I turn to it whenever the world seems drear, for it has such light and such joy in it
- KATHERINE RUNDELL,
Its high spirits are irresistible … the heroine is unstoppable
SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
Perfect characters and dialogue - the most satisfying book I've ever read
RED
A story, like Mansfield Park, of falling in love with a whole family
- A N WILSON, SPECTATOR
The style is hectic and passionate, the jokes thick and fast, the emotions full and right, the humanity total and engulfing ... a first fruit to savour and exalt
THE TIMES
A very funny book ... A complex and highly polished work ... Barbara Trapido has that rare ability to make her characters respond to small misfortunes and irritations exactly as people do
NEW YORK TIMES
I've given ... <i>Brother of the More Famous Jack</i> to dozens of people, and like me, they fall rapturously in love with Trapido's breezy, raunchy and unsentimental style
- MARIA SEMPLE, NEW YORK TIMES
A sort of bohemian <i>Brideshead Revisited</i>
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
Very funny, very English, very sad
DAILY TELEGRAPH
A highly promising debut – fast, inventive, funny
LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS
This is a first novel ... but if established writers could get this good on the seventh try, readers would be the richer for it ... What a lovely novel – charming, intelligent and a happy ending too. Barbara Trapido, where have you been?
USA TODAY
If you've been looking for a modern love story that shines with off-beat charm and sprightly intelligence – not to mention elegance of style – take heart ... This brief account cannot do justice to the wry, civilized tone and understated wit that lights up Trapido’s writing
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
A pleasure … full of excellent things, enormously exuberant, carried along for the most part on vivid dialogue for which Ms Trapido has an uncannily perceptive ear
EVENING STANDARD