Brother of the More Famous Jack

The fiction equivalent of a brisk walk followed by a hot buttered crumpet: fresh, invigorating, comforting and heartening * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *
Few writers give more pleasure and joy to their readers. Trapido has such a gift for seeing the world’s weight so clearly and writing about it so lightly -- KAMILA SHAMSIE
It is the perfect book. Beautiful, heartbreaking, funny, and utterly ageless. The first time I read it, I knew within pages that Brother of the More Famous Jack was going to become my favourite novel. The second time, that this brilliant, funny, intensely moving work is everything I aspire to as a writer. Every reading since, that devotion to Barbara Trapido is my only true requisite in a friend -- MEG MASON
Can we talk about Barbara Trapido? I love those books so much … So charming, they’re absolutely gorgeous. For me, reading Barbara Trapido is like entering a entirely different world … I’d recommend everyone read Brother of the More Famous Jack -- MARIAN KEYES
Still as fresh and funny after all those years; the perfect coming-of-age novel -- CLARE CHAMBERS
Why did it take me so long to discover the singular joys of Barbara Trapido's novels? Why, for so many years, had I missed these witty, soulful, heartbreaking, expansive, brilliant tales? What have I been wasting my time doing? Reading books that AREN'T perfect? Never again! -- ELIZABETH GILBERT
I am wildly jealous of anyone who hasn’t yet read Barbara Trapido. They have yet to discover the joy of her often hilarious and always profound world; they are about to meet her intricate cast of recurring characters; they will soon have those glorious moments of Trapidean epiphany when they realise – oh! – the boy in this book is the child of a woman in that book. There is no-one like Barbara. Buy all her books, quick, and then sit back, crack the spines, and prepare to marvel -- MAGGIE O'FARRELL
Brother of the More Famous Jack is the book we need right now: smart, funny, honest, painful and true. It is the best possible company as we make our way through this difficult world. I love it -- ANN PATCHETT
A moving, intense, earthy and witty book, both illuminating and extraordinary as a first novel * THE TIMES *
She is a writer I feel genuinely evangelical about, and I think she's criminally underread. I'd honestly go to Speaker's Corner and stand on a box and read out passages from Brother of the More Famous Jack, such is my love for it -- DAISY BUCHANAN
The exuberance, the humour, the gritty toughness and the sadness ... I really love the way she writes -- MIRIAM TOEWS
I adored Brother of the More Famous Jack. It is redolent of classics like The Constant Nymph with both its true voice and wonderfully sage and sanguine heroine -- SOPHIE DAHL
Brother of the More Famous Jack is one of the funniest, warmest, sexiest, sharpest novels I’ve ever read. I must have read it a dozen times: I turn to it whenever the world seems drear, for it has such light and such joy in it -- KATHERINE RUNDELL
Its high spirits are irresistible … the heroine is unstoppable * SUNDAY TELEGRAPH *
Perfect characters and dialogue - the most satisfying book I've ever read * RED *
A story, like Mansfield Park, of falling in love with a whole family -- A N WILSON * SPECTATOR *
The style is hectic and passionate, the jokes thick and fast, the emotions full and right, the humanity total and engulfing ... a first fruit to savour and exalt * THE TIMES *
A very funny book ... A complex and highly polished work ... Barbara Trapido has that rare ability to make her characters respond to small misfortunes and irritations exactly as people do * NEW YORK TIMES *
I've given ... Brother of the More Famous Jack to dozens of people, and like me, they fall rapturously in love with Trapido's breezy, raunchy and unsentimental style -- MARIA SEMPLE * NEW YORK TIMES *
A sort of bohemian Brideshead Revisited * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
Very funny, very English, very sad * DAILY TELEGRAPH *
A highly promising debut – fast, inventive, funny * LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS *
This is a first novel ... but if established writers could get this good on the seventh try, readers would be the richer for it ... What a lovely novel – charming, intelligent and a happy ending too. Barbara Trapido, where have you been? * USA TODAY *
If you've been looking for a modern love story that shines with off-beat charm and sprightly intelligence – not to mention elegance of style – take heart ... This brief account cannot do justice to the wry, civilized tone and understated wit that lights up Trapido’s writing * SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE *
A pleasure … full of excellent things, enormously exuberant, carried along for the most part on vivid dialogue for which Ms Trapido has an uncannily perceptive ear * EVENING STANDARD *