Permanence

I loved this sensuous, moving, and quietly devastating novel. Sophie Mackintosh’s portrait of a couple in desperate thrall to doomed romance—and her revelations about the dangers and delights of intimacy, of vulnerability’s risks and rewards—will stay with me for a long time

Monica Heisey, author of 'Really Good, Actually'

Astonishing and unforgettable. Reading Permanence is like dreaming – sensual and atmospheric, vivid and hazy at once. The novel shimmers like a vision or a memory; I loved spending time there

Francesca Reece, author of 'Voyeur'

A haunting and seductive novel which pulses with the possibility, or impossibility, of love. The unmet needs and violent hungers of Sophie Mackintosh’s characters do not remain within their bodies but instead fester in the crumbling monuments and shifting landscapes they inhabit. As her readers, we too are pulled into those glimmering psychic fissures

Avni Doshi, author of 'Burnt Sugar'

A devastating twist on the love story; Permanence asks us to examine whether desire can survive in the absence of longing, whether passion can only ever truly grow in the shadows. It is Mackintosh’s best novel yet

Keiran Goddard, author of 'Hourglass'

With Permanence, Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out. This is the perfect imperfect love story: haunting, unsettling, uncanny

Lauren Elkin, author of 'Scaffolding'

A truly beautiful book... Sophie Mackintosh offers a nuanced, confronting and original perspective on love and desire. But she also probes fundamental questions about agency and freedom with wry, refreshing intelligence. This book made me think a lot and I also found it very moving. I loved it

Rachel Connolly, author of 'Lazy City'

I adore Sophie Mackintosh’s eerie, ethereal fictions – gorgeous, psychologically fraught fever dreams that linger in the mind for days after reading

LitHub

Like Severance for relationships... Sophie Mackintosh is exactly the writer you want for this kind of uncanny desire experiment

Oprah Daily

A dreamlike, speculative fable about the suspended reality of love affairs, rendered with Mackintosh’s trademark precision and intensity... In charged, sensuous prose, Mackintosh probes the price of illicit romance and the tensions imposed by secrecy

Bookseller, 'April Recommendations'

Wonderfully immersive [and] dreamlike

Stylist, '37 things that will be huge in 2026'

A brilliant parable about desire, infidelity and devotion. With Sophie Mackintosh’s work, the thrill is in the slow, disquieting unfurling of the world. A dark gem that asks us to consider the cost of intimacy – I tore through it

Erin Somers, author of 'The Ten-Year Affair'

Delicate, ethereal... A dreamy meditation on the power of love

Publishers Weekly

A haunting meditation on desire and consequence, where love is tested by the very freedom it often craves

Stylist, 'Nine non-traditional love stories for Valentine’s Day'

It reads like a dream which is secretly a nightmare. I loved it

Vincenzo Latronico, author of 'Perfection'

Chic, enthralling, utterly plausible, Mackintosh's latest novel is my favourite of the lot... Her writing hums with elegance . . . It's the kind of book that you'll want to read in one long gulp, the literary equivalent of a crisp glass of rosé . . . [It] needs to be savoured

Sunday Times

Dreamlike, sensuous, intoxicating . . . Mackintosh probes the pull and hidden cost of illicit love in this unsettling speculative romance

iNews, 'Best new books to read in April 2026'

Inventive and convincing . . . A rich, alluring concept, offering much literary fun

Sarah Moss, Guardian

Mackintosh is a elegant stylist with a knack for exposing the tensions of intimate relationships and generating an atmosphere of creepiness . . . This is a clever tale that cautions less against adultery than against the belief that escaping reality is the path to bliss

Literary Review

Thoughtful and provocative, sparing yet deeply emotive, Permanence addresses the blurring of the lines between love and desire, reality and disconnect, and reminds us that the granting of wishes comes at a cost

Irish News

Sophie Mackintosh’s enchanting book is an uncanny yet oddly familiar story of longing and loyalty

Monocle

A heady, addictive novel

Prospect

Sophie Mackintosh has made her name with surreal, eerie fiction that probes the darker edges of human relationships. Her latest book, Permanence, turns more directly towards a love story, offering a novel that is as strange and dreamlike as it is tender

i Paper

I recently gobbled up Sophie Mackintosh's latest novel Permanence, which is about a couple inhabiting an alternative world where everyone is having affairs

Dua Lipa, Elle

Sophie Mackintosh is a master of the arresting premise . . . She’s excelled herself here with a time-slip novel about an adulterous couple who, 18 months into their affair, wake up to find themselves in a parallel city where they can indulge their desires to their hearts’ content . . . Mackintosh explores the implications, delusions and limitations of desire in its myriad forms in a transfixing novel that elegantly balances profundity and playfulness

Daily Mail

Permanence is Severance meets The Good Place for cheaters, and makes for a playful and often sweet novel about relationships, time, and devotion

Our Culture

Lyrical and precise . . . Mackintosh has a spare and confident hand . . . When Mackintosh writes about masculine power, she does so in a way that articulates both its seductions and its terrors . . . Permanence has the same erotic charge as her earlier work, the same preoccupation with social prohibitions and the thrill that comes from breaking them

New York Times