The Man in the Shed

Reviews / Votes

'Jones moves fluently from small incidents to large emotions, transforming the mundane . . . the attentive care for minute particulars is found on page after page . . . People who might otherwise seem unremarkable are realised on the page and in our imagination, with all their affection, anger and puzzlement' * Sunday Times * Crackles with originality, startling images and lucidity * Listener * Praise for Mister Pip * - - * 'Lloyd Jones brings to life the transformative power of fiction ... The experience of reading in this book is tangible ...This is a beautiful book. It is tender, multi-layered and redemptive' * Sunday Times * 'It's clear from the first page that this is prize-winning stuff... Being a truthful writer, Jones sees nothing neither his heroes nor his villains in black and white. His is a bold inquiry into the way that we construct and repair our communities, and ourselves, with stories old and new' * The Times * 'In this dazzling story-within-a-story, Jones has created a microcosm of post-colonial literature, hybridising the narratives of back and white races to create a new and resonant fable ... There is a fittingly dreamy lyrical quality to Jones's writing, along with an acute ear for the earthly harmonies of village speech ... Mister Pip is the first of Jones's six novels to have travelled from his native New Zealand to the UK. It is so hoped that it won't be the last' * Observer * Praise for Hand Me Down World * - - * Compelling . . . vivid . . . intense . . . one of the most significant novelists writing today * Sunday Times * Humane and moving, it's a worthy successor to Jones's last novel, the Booker-shortlisted Mister Pip * Daily Mail * Artfully constructed and delicately nuanced . . . Hand Me Down World has an eerie compulsion * D J Taylor, Financial Times * Everyone will want to read Hand Me Down World and few will be able to stop thinking about it after they do * Irish Independent * The novel's readability belies its great depth . . . Jones's novel is haunting to the very final line * Sunday Telegraph * This is, to make a bold claim, an extraordinary novel . . . Jones is a daring writer who can be relied on to ignore expectation, and is becoming one of the most interesting, honest and thought-provoking novelists working today * Joanna Briscoe, Guardian *