'As is typical of the best classics, he has fashioned a universal tale of sexual obsession, love and death out of a particular life'
Marie Claire
'Even in its sexiest moments, it never loses its intellectual poise. Dry witticisms intersperse sweaty couplings...<i>The Folding Star </i>is a novel of considerable breadth.What gives it its depth is the candour, wit, sensuous immediacy and melancholy intelligence applied to it'
- Peter Kemp, Times Literary Supplement
'Few writers' prose can throw a party as easily as retire to the library as Hollinghurst's...[He ] is on as fine a form in this novel as his first'
- Tom Shone, Spectator
'Grand 19th-century <i>fin-de-siècle </i>lusciousness, a seamy 20th-century carnality and a generous pinch of true wit'
Sunday Times