‘Adam Mars-Jones has never needed to write at great length to convince readers of his talent … Mars-Jones’s latest work is a sliver of a novel that provides ample evidence of his prowess … Box Hill is not a novel for the prudish, but it is a masterclass in authorial control … Despite its diminutive length, it is rich with detail and complexity, and has plenty to demonstrate Mars-Jones’s well-deserved place on any list of our best.’
Alex Nurnberg, Sunday Times
‘A tender exploration of the love that truly dare not speak its name — that between master and slave. On his 18th birthday, Colin literally stumbles upon a strapping biker twice his age, and falls into a long-term relationship characterised by devotion, mystery, and submission. In plain unadorned prose, Mars-Jones shows us the tender, everyday nature of this. Self-deprecating, sad, and wise.’
Fiona McGregor
‘I very much enjoyed Box Hill. It is a characteristic Mars-Jones mixture of the shocking, the endearing, the funny, and the sad, with an unforgettable narrator. The sociological detail is as ever acutely entertaining.’
Margaret Drabble
‘An exquisitely discomfiting tale of a submissive same-sex relationship … perfectly realised … [U]ltimately, our interest in the book’s twisted romance lies … in how it raises intractable questions about the essential mystery of attachment between consenting adults.’
Anthony Cummins, The Guardian
‘Crisp, matter-of-fact prose … There’s an endearing anti-glamour to this novel, from its geographical setting — the bikers live in suburban locales rarely featured in contemporary fiction, such as Woking and West Byfleet — to its affectionate evocation of the cultural landscape of the 1970s — a world of shandies, Wimpy, Advocaat, obsolescent British-made bikes and the word ‘naff’.’
Houman Barekat, Spectator Australia
‘The biggest small book of the year.’
John Self, Guardian
‘It is a testament to Mars-Jones’s skill that we finish the book with everything illuminated, and yet, quite properly, everything left in the dark.’
The Telegraph
‘A subtle, biting novella … Although repressed boomers of Surrey are probably not the target audience of this intimate, stirring novel, they would probably enjoy this portrait of an impossibly lost age.’
Martin Chilton, Independent
‘If Tom of Finland had grown up in deepest Surrey in the 1970s, his homoerotic sketches of muscly motorcyclists and police officers might’ve resembled the men depicted in this slim, smouldering novel … A vividly realised coming-of-age tale, Mars-Jones — known for his elegant fiction as well as penetrating literary criticism — lets it all hang out in this quietly powerful exploration of sexuality, sadomasochism, and the self.’
Buzz Magazine
‘A well-made piece of work, with prose as witty – if not quite as rich, which is appropriate – as well as being sad and strange: the ballad of Colin and Ray.’
Owen Richardson, Sydney Morning Herald
‘[A] trim, poignant novel … A relationship that could seem profoundly unfair blossoms into a revelation of love and magic.’ STARRED REVIEW
Kirkus Reviews
‘The very best novel of the year was Adam Mars-Jones’s complex, shifting and sensationally lewd Box Hill— for once in 2020 a novel written not to make an approved point or demonstrate its author’s virtue but to explore calmly the wildest stretches of human behaviour. Its subject is cruelty, both theatrically performed and executed in reality, without costumes. A masterpiece that Dame Ivy would have been greatly interested by.’
Phillip Hensher, Spectator
‘This unabashed novel by influential British critic and author Adam Mars-Jones is witty and full of unexpected humour … The book showcases perfectly the irony, dark humour and the witty style of Mars-Jones’ storytelling.’
Mikolaj Bac, Revuu Magazine
Praise for Kid Gloves: a voyage round my father:
‘One of the best memoirs not only of this year but many … takes a family situation that would have prompted many writers to gory score-settling — a liberal gay son providing end-of-life care to his father, a homophobic Tory judge — and produces an account that manages to be tender, sharp and funny’
Mark Lawson, New Statesman, ‘Books of the Year’
Praise for Kid Gloves: a voyage round my father:
‘Moving … Mars-Jones is a logic-chopping polymath whose writing sings with cleverness and wit’
Telegraph
Praise for Cedilla:
‘Cedilla by Adam Mars-Jones [is] brilliant … it approache[s] David Foster Wallace-esque levels of syntactical elaboration in order to render the extraordinary consciousness of the cunning, crippled John Cromer.’
Telegraph, ‘Books of the Year’
Praise for Cedilla:
‘[A] truly remarkable novel … Mars-Jones has Joyce’s talent for revealing the absurdity and tender spots of human experience, and a genius for empathy.’
Psychologies magazine
Praise for Pilcrow:
‘Mars-Jones's prose is exceptionally nimble, dry, humorously restrained, very English, with a little Nabokovian velvet too. He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting.’
James Wood, London Review of Books
Praise for Pilcrow:
‘Beautifully written and truly exhilarating.’
Peter Parker, Sunday Times
Praise for Pilcrow:
‘Intelligent, linguistically brilliant and … funny.’
Melissa McClements, Financial Times
