‘Huge, exhilarating, loving and detailed eruption of a novel…
an utterly intoxicating display of novelistic elan … big and joyous,
literary and accessible … storytelling at its buoyant best’
Scotsman

‘A triumph to follow up Behind the Scenes with this – astonishing …
clearly an unlimited talent’
Margaret Forster

‘Wonderful … she is an extraordinary writer – earthy and funny,
yet mysterious’
Deborah Moggach

‘There’s a laugh on every second page, often a laugh out loud,
and Shakespeare makes a personal appearance’
Daily Telegraph

‘A novel which will dazzle readers for years to come’
Hilary Mantel, London Review of Books

‘Atkinson’s passion for England and Engiishness is an unfashionable
and pleasant surprise. Shakespeare’s her hero but I think Chaucer
might give her a wave’
Spectator

‘The author’s voice remains irresistible, her dialogue wry and
imagery fluent’
Time Out

‘A literary tour de force’
San Francisco Chronicle

‘Kate Atkinson won the 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year Prize for
her first novel … Can she produce something as original, readable
and funny as her first book? Human Croquet proves triumphantly that
she can’
Irish Examiner

‘A belly-laugh a page … Atkinson is a gifted storyteller’
New Statesman

‘Atkinson’s wit and her genius for character put a varnish of delight
on the solid carpentry of her ideas. Her novels are remarkable both
in and of themselves, and as evidence of an important emerging
body of work from a brilliant and profoundly original writer’
Daily Express

‘No matter what category Human Croquet is ultimately slotted into
by the literary establishment – magical post-modern metafiction?
post-magical realism? post-modern magicalism? – it offers further
proof that Kate Atkinson is off and running in quite a fantastic
direction of her own devising … What makes it so successful is
that it really doesn’t matter if a reader recognizes every gesture in
Atkinson’s literary high-wire act, because the multitude of characters
are defined with such vivid specificity that they – and what happens
to them – matter the most’
New York Times Book Review

‘With just two novels, Atkinson has added new colour to the
British literary landscape’
Guardian