Prizes

War Crimes for the Home

'Magnificent ... [Jensen] ratchets up the tension in this clever, complex novel, whose repeated reference to hypnotism, amnesia and mind control is skilfully managed and exploited to provide a sense of the lasting mental damage of war-time trauma. Jensen has created a recognisable and enduring character ... in an impressively capricious and imaginative tale.'
Guardian

'This is a crisp, clean, harpoon of a tale. Intriguingly, the author adopts the empathy of the actor rather than the writer: she gets inside Gloria to the extent of allowing her to say what the character would not have needed to say ... hugely moving.'
Independent on Sunday

'Telling the tale through the mouth of a poorly educated, aged woman with a bad memory sounds like an impossible constraint, but Jensen manages it superbly. Gloria's voice comes through with remarkable consistency: brash, brassy, but above all compassionate. And even her jokes are usually funny — when she can remember the punchlines. A delicious story, beautifully crafted, mixing suspense with tenderness in just the right proportions.'
Daily Express

'The term "dark humour" doesn't do Liz Jensen justice ... You will laugh aloud at the beginning — and probably weep at the end.'
Daily Telegraph'

'In the character of Gloria Jensen manages successfully to depict a personality in many ways dislikeable — anarchically misanthropic, cruel, self-deluded — but with whom we feel sympathy. Above all Jensen conveys with poignancy but no sentimentality the pain and guilt that Gloria clearly feels despite all her denials. This versatile writer has given a twist of her own to the literature of the Second World War, and has produced a satisfying, moving and often funny novel.'
Sunday Telegraph

'It's a brave decision on an author's part to choose an unsympathetic narrator ... Jensen provides a good yarn with a tactile sense of the period. That the reader never warms to Gloria is the novel's strength: a certain coldness keeps it from being merely a tear-jerker and makes the story linger in the reader's mind.'
The Times

'Jensen's very, very dark comedy drama shatters both the rose-tinted view of the home front during the Blitz of the Second World War and our view of old age in general ... brutally tragic, savagely funny and as lively as the premise promises'
Scotsman

'This is a dark story of the Home Front shot through with gung-ho humour and Gloria's feisty determination to whistle past the graveyard. It's a tribute to Jensen that such a brutal tale can be told with jauntiness and leave you almost admiring the murderous Gloria.'
Daily Mail

'Jensen's depiction of the youthful Gloria (coarse, funny, vibrantly alive) and her still-recognisable spark in the gutsy old woman is skilfully handled, and the theme of weakness mingled with resilience, of hard choices and human error and the price that life exacts, has a universal resonance.'
Sunday Times

'By turns, breathtakingly coarse, wryly amusing and gut-wrenchingly tragic ... Jensen adds a twist to the familiar tale of a wartime romance that goes wrong, but it's her portrayal of Gloria that demands most praise. From sexy, fag-smoking munitions worker to randy old lady with a secret, Gloria takes the novel by the throat and runs with it.'
Marie Claire

The Paper Eater

'Liz Jensen is one of the few living writers who can be described as genuinely original'
Matt Thorne

'It fairly fizzles with energy...a truly exhilarating, invigorating read'
Margaret Forster

'If this is what the new century holds for the novel, we're in luck. Uncowed by female literary tradition, moved by high intelligence, sharp, funky, funny, prophetic'
Fay Weldon

'Liz Jensen is a true original, beholden to nobody'
Deborah Moggach

Ark Baby

'Brightly plumed, frantically paced and madly comic'
Sunday Times

'Sure to mark her out as one of Britain's great new literary talents'
Elle

A thoroughbred among comic novels, amiably peopled with Dickensian grotesques ... ambitious, mischievous, clever and very funny'
Time Out

Egg Dancing

'Highly recommended ... this reviewer hasn't found herself laughing out so loud so much since, oh, maybe Martin Amis's Money'
Liz Lochhead