All Shall Be Well; And All Shall Be Well; And All Manner of Things Shall Be Well

Bursting with humour and weighted with sadness

Financial Times

Vibrant, original, at times hilarious...reminiscent of Philip Roth or Jonathan Franzen (or The Royal Tenenbaums, for that matter)

New Statesman

Wodicka has crafted an eccentric tale full of humour and compassion

Guardian

A boisterous debut...a genuinely moving narrative - applause is justified

Times Literary Supplement

Packed with wit, humour and wise epigrammatic observations on life

Big Issue

Wodicka's narrative displays a skill that frequently belies his status as a first-time novelist

The Times

So who's the worst father in literature? Lear? Pap Finn? Michael Henchard? Ladies and gentlemen, there's a new contender in town. Tod Wodicka has created a monster of neglect and lack of awareness in bulbous-nosed Burt Hecker, a 63-year-old American medieval re-enactor who wouldn't know answerability from a hole in the ground.

Sunday Telegraph

Wodicka is assured and original, and his wry and subtle prose is a pleasure throughout. Burt is a pathetic, frustrating and sympathetic creation, heartbroken and heartbreaking as he struggles to pull himself together for his children.

Observer

Wodicka is original and writes an efficient, precise prose

Irish Times

A wonderfully memorable protagonist... and an arresting narrative that manages to combine both tragedy and hilarity

The Bookseller

Funny... accomplished

Kamran Nazeer, Prospect

Boy is it fun to read All Shall Be Well...Traveling through Eastern Europe with Burt Hecker, aka Eckbert Attquiet, medieval re-enactor and mead-addled father, is a little like heading south with Charles Portis' Ray Midge or being holed up in the campgrounds with Nabokov's Charles Kinbote - uproarious, wholly odd, wonderfully rendered

Joshua Ferris

An astonishing, beautiful book. It's comic and compassionate, assured in tone and richly poetic. Best of all, it's so original, unfolding in brilliantly unexpected and entertaining ways. Easily among the very best novels - never mind debuts - that I've read in years.

Peter Hobbs, author of The Short Day Dying and I Could Ride All Day in My Cold Blue Train