Thursday, August 31, 2006

Press Quotes

Quotes for "The Heritage":
"Ashon creates a paranoia thriller plot and then deliberately lets it all fall apart. In doing so, he manages to both confirm contemporary anxieties and ridicule them, beautifully capturing the uncertainty of our age." Independent on Sunday

"A disturbing, sophisticated and brilliant novel... this is fresh, explicit, unsettling fiction" Irish Times

"An ambitious, visionary story, but with a fiercely beating heart. No one writes modern Britain the way the Ashon does, visceral, grimy, taking us to all the places we know exist but do our best to avoid. It has killer dialogue that actually portrays how 21st century kids speak without resorting to gimmics or catchphrases, and plotwise moves from teenage wit to poignancy with deceptive ease. An outstanding piece of work from a writer who has raised the bar for any aspiring novelists who think they can tackle our 21st century UK." Niven Govinden, author of "Graffiti My Soul"

"A completely assured - if intensely discombobulating - book, The Heritage has “cult classic” written all over it, but also suggests a writer with a great future." Word Magazine

"It might be an adventure novel for the tougher-minded young teen: two mismatched mates hurtling through a grubby inferno on a quest for self-actualisation. Eventually, an eruption of gore and explicit druggy nastiness will convince us that what confronts Titch and Sadie is more grown-up than that: an increasingly sinister... snarl of bad faith, bad blood and false identity." - The Guardian

"A dissection of modern corporate capitalism quite as vicious as anything Jim Ballard has ever put out." - www.bookbag.co.uk

Quotes for "Clear Water":
"It's a very confident debut author who offers his characters no hope of redemption and it's [Ashon's] intellectual fury that makes the novel so memorable... A beguiling and arrestingly original mix... Ashon has a long literary career ahead of him." - Matt Thorne, Independent on Sunday

"A shiny, hyper-modern dream of Eden is here stripped to its bloody heart... a realism that can include moments of sheer, quiet, sad poetry... watch this space, because Ashon can really write" - The Guardian

"A brawny, dystopian novel that never loses its Orwellian sense of humour … Clear Water is a rewarding novel that signals the arrival of a skilled cultural commentator." - Time Out

"Startlingly original and defiantly British... Ashon is a major new talent." - Independent on Sunday, Fifty Hot Books For Summer

"A brave and ambitious treatise on modern England.. a weird and wonderful trip" - i-D

"Extraordinary... A superbly written exposé of consumer society and contemporary mores by a prodigious new talent." - The Book Magazine

"A weird and wonderful look at the dreadful side of modern England" - Esquire

"There is an impressive imagination at work here and... flashes of brilliance in the writing." - The New Statesman

"Few debut novelists display the ambition shown by Will Ashon in Clear Water... a unique and spell-binding tale that heralds the arrival of a major new talent" - Rhyl & Prestatyn Journal

"A darkly comic critique of Britain... every bit as encompassing as a Don De Lillo novel... an extremely compelling book" - Flux

"Marks the arrival of a fresh, wry and intellectual talent onto the UK literary scene... an enthralling debut" - The Skinny

"Not often is Englishness and all it means treated with the same extended examination as Clear Water provides; as such this is an important novel; one which is as compelling, funny and accessible as it is literary." - Blowback

"A black and baroque talent" - Tribune

"A remarkable, darkly funny, addictive and far ranging novel" - Clash