A Lover's Discourse

A story told with charm that will leave you in a ponderous mood

Susannah Butter, Evening Standard

Xiaolu Guo writes with tremendous delicacy and nuance about migration, language, alienation, and love . . . Guo has pared down every tiny chapter to its poetic essence so as to let the largest themes emerge, thus taking the reader from the verbal to something approaching the numinous

Mike Cormack, Spectator

Guo's latest novel . . . demonstrates how much can be achieved when narrative is cut loose from plot and scene-setting in favour of free-floating reflection

Anthony Cummins

An absolute must-read and one of the finest novels of 2020, period

Books and Bao

Xiaolu Guo is adept at exploring cultural difference . . . It's a subject she knows well and she delivers it in her customary forthright and entertaining style

Lucy Popescu, Tablet, *Novel of the Week*

A fragmentary meditation on the nature of love, on desire and on connection between two humans . . . this book sets off cross-cultural echoes with the lightest of strokes

Aida Edemariam, Guardian

Do we feel we belong once we have a sense of place, or does the feeling instead come from our relationships? Xiaolu Guo tackles this and other heady questions . . . Through her precise and unflinching language, a revealing account emerges of how one mind opens to another, how it processes each decision and moment of wondering

USA Today

Guo is an unsparing noticer. The truthfulness and accuracy of Guo's language gives the book mischief and energy. There are shades of Lydia Davis in her carefully etched sentences as she details the ups and downs of the relationship without sentimentality. . . . Along the way, it's capacious enough to touch on moments of real darkness, while somehow managing to be mordant, funny and, ultimately, life-affirming

Marcel Theroux, New York Times

A calmly searching, contemplative novel

Guardian