Seductively intelligent and stylish writing, mercilessly comic in the ways it strips the creative ego bare

- Peter Carty, Independent

Funny, uplifting and moving... Lerner's genius is to put into words that universal, often-lost period when most young people are commitment-free but weighed down with a sense of the nascent self... We finish this book feeling a little cleverer, and a little happier

- Isabel Berwick, Financial Times

Wonderful precision and comic timing... Superb

- Anthony Cummins, Metro

An anatomy of a generation's uncertainty and self-involvement, the novel offers a carefully constructed snapshot of a nation in doubt... Beautifully written

- Stephen J. Burns, Times Literary Supplement

The overall narrative is structured around subtle, delicate moments... They're comic but they're also beautiful and touching and precise

- Jenny Turner, Guardian

Hilarious and cracklingly intelligent, fully alive and original in every sentence, and abuzz with the feel of our late-late-modern moment

- Jonathan Franzen, Guardian, Books of the Year 2011

[A] subtle, sinuous, and very funny first novel. . . . [with] a beguiling mixture of lightness and weight. There are wonderful sentences and jokes on almost every page

- James Wood, New Yorker

One of the most talked-about fiction debuts this year, it's a book for anyone who's ever been young and self-conscious in a foreign city. The Spanish travails (or lack of them) of Lerner's preening poet narrator are painful, well-observed and often very funny

- Hari Kunzru,

One of the funniest (and truest) novels I know of by a writer of his generation. . . . [A] dazzlingly good novel

- Lorin Stein, New York Review of Books

A dazzling first novel that does not flinch from difficulty but asks questions of language and art and what we can do with them

- Amy Sackville, Books of the Year, Big Issue

Utterly charming. Lerner's self-hating, lying, overmedicated, brilliant fool of a hero is a memorable character, and his voice speaks with a music distinctly and hilariously all his own

- Paul Auster,

I love to death Ben Lerner's novel . . . [A] significant book

- David Shields, Los Angeles Review of Books

A marvellous novel, not least because of the magical way that it reverses the postmodernist spell, transmuting a fraudulent figure into a fully dimensional and compelling character

Wall Street Journal

A slightly deranged, philosophically inclined monologue in the Continental tradition running from Büchner's Lenz to Thomas Bernhard and Javier Marías. The adoption of this mode by a young American narrator-solipsistic, overmedicated, feckless yet ambitious-ends up feeling like the most natural thing in the world

- Benjamin Kunkel, New Statesman, Best Books of 2011

Lerner's remarkable first novel is a bildungsroman and meditation and slacker tale fused by a precise, reflective and darkly comic voice. It is also a revealing study of what it's like to be a young American abroad... for America, the path from The Sun Also Rises to Leaving the Atocha Station seems frighteningly downward

- Gary Sernovitz, New York Times Book Review

This debut has already created quite a stir in the US. Jonathan Franzen is a fan ("hilarious and crackingly intelligent") as is Paul Auster

- Alice O’Keeffe, Bookseller

Billy Liar as written by Proust

- Tom Sutcliffe, BBC Radio 4's Saturday Review

Hugely entertaining

- Liz Jensen,

The author's poetic skills and sandpaper-dry humour mounted a charm offensive

Skinny

An extraordinary novel about the intersections of art and reality in contemporary life

- John Ashbery,

[In this] short but potent novel . . . Lerner sets up profound questions about the possibilities of art and human experience . . . beguiling

- Andrew Staffell, The Times

An odd, utterly distinctive book... I do recommend it

- Tom Sutcliffe, Independent

Lerner conveys, with the lightest of touches, the wordly truth that the truly profound and totally mundane are sometimes feather-width apart

Newcastle Evening Chronicle

One of the most remarkable books I have read this year... Lerner's poetry manifests itself in elegantly stilted grammar, in contradiction and self-cancellation, in painfully self-aware self-mirroring and especially in misunderstanding... The camber of Adam's thoughts is conveyed with astonishing grace

- Stuart Kelly, Scotsman

A thoroughly first-rate first novel: properly cutting edge, searingly clever and dark and beautiful

- Stuart Hammond, Dazed & Confused

I was amused and appalled by the anti-hero

- David Nicholls, Books of the Year, Guardian

A refined comedy

- Jonathan Derbyshire, Books of the Year, New Statesman

The sharpest and funniest novel I have read this year

- Craig Brown, Books of the Year, Mail on Sunday

At its core, it's a deeply serious novel that - almost by stealth - makes you think afresh about all those late night imponderables to do with art and the meaning of life... A stunning debut

Metro

Acclaimed debut novel that follows the fortunes of an alienated, self-medicating American poetry student living in Madrid

Observer

This arrestingly clever debut novel blends lyricism, wit and emotional self-laceration

Sunday Telegraph

Very funny... One of the most acclaimed debut novels of 2012

Evening Standard

Lerner is a multi-form talent who crosses genres, modes, and media... one of the most important young writers working today

Contemporary Literature

One of the funniest (and truest) novels I know of

- Lorin Stein, editor, Paris Review

Clever, funny and beautifully written, I enjoyed every page

- Christmas Book Recommendations, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Foyles website