The Dreams of Bethany Mellmoth

A riveting short story collection from one of the best

Woman & Home

Boyd delights in themes of deceit and getting one over on the competition...such finely-honed prose

Evening Standard

Boyd has always been eloquent, his narratives memorably stylish

Literary Review

Boyd is dependably a master of what's most true: an always elegant realist whose characters will get under your skin

GQ

Boyd shows why he's so often compared to Graham Greene.... brilliant and bewitching collection of stories

Financial Times

Clever and, yes, cinematic

Observer

Enjoyably spot-on

Sunday Times

He is a skilled and humorous storyteller, and his pleasure in exploring life's uncertainties is apparent

i

Highly entertaining

Mail on Sunday

In a 2008 essay, Boyd explained that writing short stories gives him a welcome chance "to change habits, to experiment, to take risks, to try out different voices". And in the best stories here, it's a chance he takes full advantage of, serving up an impressive variety of settings and protagonists

Daily Telegraph

Like stealing badges, like shucking oysters, once you have one of these stories you can't stop. Lights out was after midnight

Times

No one charts the highs and lows of the human condition like Boyd

Red

Quite brilliant. There has been no decline in the wit, the style, the precise observation

The Tablet

Smart, funny and compelling

The Times Books of the Year

Spiky, sparking and simply brilliant

Sunday Mirror

The stories, as is often the case with Boyd, are packed with characters whose lives are upended by random upheavals

Sunday Times

These stories, by one of Britain's most compelling authors about how the post is inescapable - from random encounters to impulsive acts - is funny and surprising

Elle

Unfailingly amusing and clever

Guardian

Varied, entertaining

Daily Mail

What Boyd does so mesmerisingly...is make the insignificant utterly significant...you are confronted by the full force of Boyd's undeniable talent for storytelling, as he inventively plays with time and form, and infuses his prose with themes of lust, love and emotional incompetence

Stylist

William Boyd is arguably one of Britain's finest living writers...compelling and highly entertaining

Sunday Express