'Life is a tragedy for those who feel and a comedy for those who think, and for those of us who try to think and feel, The Song Is You captures the flip sides of life at middle age pretty much perfectly. Arthur Phillips is that rare thing among fiction writers, a wise guy who's also wise.'

Kurt Andersen, author of Heyday, founder of Spy Magazine, host of Studio 360

The Song is You is the best of three new novels (88 Lines about 44 Women and Juliet, Naked) to flesh out the burgeoning [music] genre.'

Emma Young (Sydney Morning Herald)

'Phillip’s best writing achieves an elaborate, gratifying precision, combining a naturally flamboyant style with neat, observational wit. This quality is sharpest in some of the character portraits and delectable set pieces that animate this novel.'

(The New Yorker)

'A heartbreaking ode to tragedy, isolation, longing, and... healing. A–'

(Entertainment Weekly)

'If novelists were labeled zoologically, Arthur Phillips would fall naturally into the dolphin family: his writing is playful, cerebral, likable, wide-ranging and inventive.... The whole novel zings with fresh insight and inspired writing. The Song Is You is smaller, more focused and more character-driven than Phillips’s earlier books, and it’s not only a welcome new direction, but also a novel impossible to put down.'

(The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice))

'... [a] subtle study of intimacy, security and courtship in the digital age.'

(Herald Sun)

'A television commercial director strikes up a bizarre relationship with the object of his infatuation in Phillips's enthralling fourth novel.... Phillips is in top form and does a brilliant job of transcribing the barrage of Julian's sensory data into cool and flexible prose. This is a triumphant return for Phillips.'

(Publisher's Weekly (starred review))

'By the end, I'd surrendered to its slow and sneaky pace, its oblique eroticism, its self-conscious but undeniable cleverness, and, yes, even become a grudging fan of its author... Creating an alienated (and alienating) protagonist is always a risky business. But Phillips deftly pulls off this balancing act, infusing his secondary characters with vitality.'

(Boston Globe)

'A betrayed husband’s fascination with a charismatic singer is given several intriguing twists in this subtle fourth novel from the versatile Phillips.... The novel’s clashing harmonies seduce and fascinate. And Phillips still looks like the best American novelist to have emerged during the present decade.'

(Kirkus Reviews)

Phillips 'hits a pitch-perfect note in this heartbreakingly lyrical novel... Phillips [captures] both the tenor of our times and the fragility of contemporary connections.'

(Booklist)

'He has managed, in four very different books in vastly divergent settings, to harness his flights of language to serve his imagination, and his imagination to serve literature...The Song Is You takes on loneliness, alienation, middle age and what it means to feel passé and weighted down by your past...Yet despite these sober concerns, Phillips' sparkling prose makes for a seriously fun read.'

(San Francisco Chronicle (Editor's Choice))

'Phillips has achieved what only the best novelists can — he's written a book where the beauty of the prose is matched by the depth of characterization and the fluid movement of the plot. The Song Is You is complex and rhapsodic, heart-wrenching and satisfying, an absolute pleasure to read.'

(Bookpage)

'A story of love and art in which the two are confused and jealously compete. And as in The Red Shoes, but so rarely in other works of art, it's the art-making that carries the most power and mystery... An intricately constructed pas de deux that is both surprising and convincing throughout. It's Phillips's first novel set in the present since Prague, and in its artful structure, style, and heart it's a match for that smart and charming debut.'

(Amazon (Best of April))

'A reflection upon ego, identity, and the sources of art....The soundless rhythm of language must carry [Phillips's] day, which, in occasional poignancy, it does.'

(Los Angeles Times)

'Thankfully far from predictable... Phillips writes with the precision and silkiness of Truman Capote.'

(Library Journal)