I cherished this moreish, dreamy, hazy novel... I know I will return many times to inhabit the world Lafarge has written so exquisitely
Megan Nolan Crisp and elegant, the sentences both vivid and precise... With an intelligence lightly worn, this is an immersive, maddening, unsettling read
Sean Hewitt
Irish Times
Daisy Lafarge's debut is a force to be reckoned with: all sinewy prose and sharp compulsion, with deep insight about the choreography of power and its eerie, unsettling flavor. As she pulls on the loose threads of the male artist's mythos, more unravels than mere secrets
Alexandra Kleeman, author of Something New Under the Sun Highly readable... with a sensual elegance and sense of foreboding
Observer
A work of dark, shimmering genius, which explores the toxicity of patriarchy with excoriating intelligence, verve and originality
Rebecca Tamás, author of WITCH Daisy Lafarge brings the same scientific rigour and startling intelligence that so distinguish her poetry to this taut and lyrical novel
Chloe Aridjis Arresting... a creeping sense of claustrophobia that expands with such overbearing stealth, it practically becomes a character in itself... a white-knuckle ride not because of any attendant thrills and spills but because the tension is perpetually on the brink of boiling, and then boiling over
i paper
Lafarge's writing really shines... Essentially a novel about a toxic relationship, Paul's many layers of imbalance cover language and voice, complicity, age, and life experience
Evening Standard
[A] lyrical debut novel... A compelling read
Literary Review
Daisy Lafarge excels at portraying the untethered, unnerving stage of life most of us know intimately; that moment between the unravelling and its aftermath... A hauntingly moving book
Kerri ní Dochartaigh Hypnotic... A formidable and heady novel
The Fountain
A brilliantly unsettling debut about male power and female passivity
Editor's Choice, August fiction
Bookseller
Paul has a neat, intuitive structure... Its plot is light and fast-moving... [a] beautifully constructed novel
Lamorna Ash
Guardian
As unsettling as it is captivating, Paul is a brilliantly subtle excavation of a toxic relationship
Mark O’Connell Lafarge has written a book that feels intimate and epic, gives pleasure even as it makes pleasure the site of loss: "the limit of everything"
Bhanu Kapil It's beautifully written, Lafarge's well-observed exploration of the power disparity between the pair [is] deepened and textured by intricate, allusive shades of meaning
Herald
[A] tense debut from an acclaimed poet... a compellingly creepy study of psychosexual power dynamics that doubles as a shrewd portrait of drifting millennial womanhood
Daily Mail
Carefully structured and at times an uncomfortable read, the book has shades of Sally Rooney's hit novels Normal People and Conversations With Friends. Just as it feels that Frances will not be able to escape Paul's hold on her, Lafarge offers a sliver of hope for the fight against the patriarchy
Scotland on Sunday
Lafarge is one to watch if this dazzling debut is anything to go by... cinematic
Good Housekeeping