'A study of male friendship turned sour, this novel chills and convinces.'
Financial Times
'A dark, angry novel, tightly wound.'
Guardian
'Wheatley is that increasingly rare type of young writer: he has experienced life, and it shows.'
Daily Mail
'A great debut - If this book is anything to go by [Wheatley] will have ... Read morea bright future.'
A Fiction Habit
'Wheatley paints an interesting portrait of a stable situation disintegrating despite the best attempts to hold it together. Magnificent Joe is its author's first novel, and leaves me wondering where he might go next.'
Follow the Thread
'Raw and powerful, yet compelling and emotional.'
New Books Magazine
'This fine first book, half bildungsroman and half state of England novel, tells the story of Jim and his mates growing up in a village in the north of England - Wheatley can sure turn a phrase - A sweetly sad story.'
Publishers Weekly
'Joe's the only magnificent one in this novel about working-class life - a grim and gritty novel, with a slight ray of hope at the end.'
Kirkus Reviews
'A brutal, sometimes moving book...written with a spare, unsentimental swagger and plenty of confrontational coal-black humour.'
Metro
'Taut, tense and tragic - a triumphant debut.'
Ben Myers, author of Pig Iron 'Strong and spare - witty and utterly convincing.'
Jane Rogers, author of The Testament of Jessie Lamb Show Less