The Casual vacancy - Tapa dura

This is a wonderful novel. JK Rowling's skills as a storyteller are on a par with RL Stevenson, Conan Doyle and PD James. Here, they are combined with her ability to create memorable and moving characters to produce a state-of-England novel driven by tenderness and fury (Melvyn Bragg, The Observer)

A needle-sharp and darkly comic expose of today's class-ridden society . . . A highly readable morality tale for our times (Emma Lee-Potter, Daily Express)

The Casual Vacancy is a stunning, brilliant, outrageously gripping and entertaining evocation of British society today. [J.K. Rowling] has done a rather brave thing and pulled it off magnificently (Henry Sutton, The Mirror)

One marvels at the skill with which Rowling weaves such vivid characters in and out of each other's lives (Christopher Brookmyre, The Daily Telegraph)

Heartbreaking - turning the page seems unbearable, but not as much as putting down the book would be (Deepti Hajela, Associated Press)

An exquisite and occasionally moving black comedy . . . The acid test - I suspect it would do well even if its author's name weren't J.K. Rowling (David Robinson, Scotsman)

A big, ambitious, brilliant, profane, funny, deeply upsetting and magnificently eloquent novel of contemporary England . . . This is a deeply moving book by somebody who understands both human beings and novels very, very deeply (Lev Grossman, Time Magazine)

Insightful, meaningful, daring and resolutely challenging to tabloid assumptions regarding the moral worth of individuals (Scotland on Sunday)

The action bowls along compellingly, most of the characters are vividly drawn and there are some sharp - often very sharp - observations about their social pretensions . . . a bold and distinctive effort (The Sunday Telegraph)

This is a novel of insight and skill, deftly drawn and, at the end, cleverly pulled together. It plays to her strengths as a storyteller (The Economist)