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
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 <i>Possession</i>
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
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
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 <i>Possession</i>. A truly great novel
Daily Express
Light and lustrous, commanding and transporting, The Children's Book is superb
Daily Mail