First Love

'Elegantly, beautifully written; Riley's prose is shimmering and luminous... First Love shows a writer at the very height of her powers, grappling and snaring her themes into a singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' -- Observer

'Gwendoline Riley [is] a fascinating novelist... She takes a familiar theme of midlife minor angst and focuses in, closer and closer, until the banal becomes surreal, even beautiful. The effect is beguiling... First Love is an exquisite and combative piece of news from nowhere - which is everywhere, too' -- Guardian

'Riley writes in pared-back, deceptively light sentences that twist and turn the emotional landscape almost perceptibly. Dialogue, too, is witheringly precise, often funny. First Love says something very honest about relationships' -- Sunday Times

'Devastating and stylish' -- Observer

'An intimate, uncompromising anatomy of love and revulsion between husband and wife, child and parents, from a writer of singular vision' -- Guardian

'Eviscerating, elegant, explosive... Riley's portraits are so nuanced that every character feels real, and she is funny and painfully true... Her vision is so expansive, her analysis so blistering, that First Love resonates a power that is bittersweet and highly affecting' -- Financial Times

'Compelling from the beginning. In precise, economic prose Riley conveys a sense of Edwyn and Neve's intimate relationship... An engrossing novel and Riley's writing shines through' -- Evening Standard

'Exquisite...searing... [It] is a disquieting read [but] because Riley portrays Neve and Edwyin's realtionship in such intimacy, we are also left with the stinging sense of having been loved... Five stars' -- Daily Telegraph

'Caustic, unsparing, occasionally funny and always perceptive... Riley's brutal honesty and precise, evocative language open up the possibility of joy amid wreckage with caveats... Luminous and dazzlingly brilliant' -- Irish Times

'This is, in a truly wonderful way, a perfectly horrible little novel... It is exact and exacting, [told] in pristine prose... Without giving away the ending, there is no simple ending... It is a plagal cadence, a wistful, imperfect resolution, a kind of blessing in its own way' -- Scotland on Sunday

'Visceral... almost impossible to turn away from' -- New Statesman

'Exceptionally good... an impossible little wonder of a book, terrifying and horrible... Take up the gauntlet with Gwendoline Riley: it's worth it' -- TLS

'Makes you question what love is... [Riley] should be on every literary lover's bookshelf' --Monocle Radio

'[A] brilliant, caustic snapshot of an unhappy marriage' -- Financial Times

'A modern-day Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' -- Tatler

'Riley's First Love maps the ins and outs of human emotion. It will dazzle you' -- Stylist

'Expect to read a forensic discussion of the ordinariness of life rendered bittersweet' -- Vogue

'Gwendoline Riley writes beautifully and memorably. First Love is evocative, often funny, and, towards the end, very moving' -- David Szaloy

'From Turgenev's First Love to Gwendoline Riley's is not so very far; the same panoptic, all-too-human lurches, afflictions and doubts, gorgeously exposed. Riley's artistry continues to signal the rueful need to narrate - yet the nobility of that impulse: undermined, impetuous, diffident - just as live and love - with heartbreak always in wait' --Alan Warner

'As soon as I finished reading First Love, I wanted to start it all over again... A smart and refreshingly honest look at love, relationships and how our past never leaves us... the beauty is in the reality -- Anita Rani, Daily Express

'So brilliantly, so scarily,
so harshly truthful... I've rarely laughed so much at a book. Riley's dialogue [is] startling in its verisimilitude and properly hilarious' --Pool

'[With] rich character depictions [...] Riley teases out a series of painful but exquisitely comedic episodes' -- Spectator

'Riley's descriptive powers [are] masterful... First Love is suffused with gems... Original and unforgettable' -- Mail on Sunday

'Riley brings you up short with almost every short spiky sentence in this stealthy, penetrating novel that recasts love as a dark, terrific puzzle, perhaps never to be solved' -- Daily Mail