Leaving the Atocha Station

Gales of laughter howl through [this] remarkable first novel. It's packed full of gags and page-long one-liners... intensely and unusually brilliant -- Geoff Dyer * Observer *
[This book] stood out from everything else I read this year -- Catherine O’Flynn, Books of the Year * Observer *
The best new novel I've read for a long time -- James Meek
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 *