Arthur & George by Julian Barnes

"How far is this a carefully researched biography - albeit interpreted by the creative imagination of a novelist - and how far is it fiction given a veneer of actuality by known facts? Whatever the problems, Julian Barnes has solved them brilliantly. From the first paragraphs we know ourselves to be in the hands of a major novelist and are borne forward by a compelling narrative, beautifully controlled, which combines the satisfactions of biography, social history and the excitement and ratiocination of a real-life detective story. This novel is Barnes at his best P.D James

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Harmony Silk Factory by Tash Aw

"Aw makes the most of the exoticism of his setting. India, China and Japan are almost reeling from overexposure in fiction but Malaysia is relatively new to the English reader. In one way it's a thin book in the sense that it doesn't shake up the pattern of life to show us something startlingly new, but the story Aw tells is mercilessly gripping and his prose is lucid, uncluttered, beautiful.

"Where Aw emerges as uncontested winner is in the subtle modulations of the three narratorial voices. From the clunky unreliability of Jasper, through the pellucid prose of Snow's journal to the intelligent, slightly camp, aesthetic eloquence of Wormwood, Aw orchestrates a graceful ballet of dissonances and congruences, of echoes and discords." Neel Mukherjee

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A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry

"Barry's recent work has been criticised for its impenetrable poeticisms; A Long Long Way suffers occasionally from figurative excesses, and from the author's tendency to remind us of the mighty, heartless march of history. But these quibbles are forgotten in the true, visceral music of Barry's prose: the stately terror with which he conjures the "familiar ogre" of the second gas attack, or the surreal joy of hot-water baths behind the lines.

"Willie takes on the force of an Everyman as he negotiates the 'deep, dark maze of intentions', finding no man's lands at every horizon, while his fellow soldiers rattle and sing with the urgency of lives lived on the brink of death. The story grips, shocks and saddens; but most importantly refuses to be forgotten." Tom Gatti

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Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro

"Meaningful though it is, the lack of description in Never Let Me Go is oppressive, and it is questionable whether Ishiguro intends the novel to come across quite so severely as it does.

"He is like a cook with a sense of taste so acute that his dishes lack flavour. But this is harsh, since Never Let Me Go is anything but a flavourless piece of writing. This is a fine novel, fiction as moving and horrific as Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, or John Wyndham's The Chrysalids." Tobias Hill

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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, by Marina Lewycka

"What makes this book more than just a jolly romp with political undertones is the way it captures the peculiar flavour of Eastern European immigrant life in the postwar years, and after.

"This is a novel in which ghosts are laid -the ghosts of international conflicts, and those of family strife. Uncomfortable ironies are explored: the tendency of "assimilated" immigrants to reject more recent incomers -even those of their own kind -is one of these. All of which makes A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian a very rich mixture indeed, as well as very enjoyable reading. One can see why it was an obvious choice for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime." Christina Koning

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Beyond Black, by Hilary Mantel

"Hilary Mantel is often praised for (among other things) her "wit". It is true that all her novels, and her brilliant memoir, Giving Up the Ghost, are superbly witty.

"But 'wit' is too pallid a word for her particular brand of comedy. Mantel is dreadfully funny -funny with an evil streak, as things are when you pass through the membrane of normality; funny like slapstick at a funeral.

"Beyond Black is chilling, creepy and endlessly inventive."

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Saturday by Ian McEwan

"Saturday develops into a sinuously plotted drama conforming to the classical unities of time, place and action. It also includes a series of brilliantly vivid tableaux, in which McEwan slows or freezes the dramatic action to better emphasise the rituals of daily violence that surround, and sometimes even protect, our elusive experience of happiness. Artistically, morally and politically, he excels." Ruth Scurr

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The People's Act of Love, by James Meek

"This is a highly-charged novel, but its intensity is fabulous rather than novelistic, in that it relies on the unfolding of a story rather than on the interiority of the characters, who are well drawn, but do not offer intimacy to the reader. They have elements of folk-tale in them, and perhaps their origins lie as much in the Russian fairytale tradition as in the traditions of the Russian novel." Helen Dunmore

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The Sea by John Banville

"The Sea recalls the childhood of Max Morden, and his youthful encounter with Mr and Mrs Grace one summer at the shore. Banville's precision is meticulous and sensual." Erica Wagner

The Accidental, by Ali Smith

"After all those sullied orthodoxies and self-serving lies about strong story and sympathetic characters mouthed by publishing gurus, Ali Smith's third novel, The Accidental, is a shot across the bows, a clarion call, the first line of a revolutionary manifesto. For a start, there is no "strong plot" so beloved of those who want readers to remain spoon-fed and infantilised. Instead, there is a mosaic of voices, each singing its aria in its allocated space but also, in cunning links and reverberations, illuminating the other voices and filling out other stories." Neel Mukherjee

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Not reviewed

JM Coetzee - Slow Man

Rachel Cusk - In the Fold

Dan Jacobson - All For Love

Salman Rushdie - Shalimar the Clown

Zadie Smith - On Beauty

Harry Thompson - This Thing of Darkness

William Wall - This Is The Country

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