Lanark, the first novel and arguably the masterpiece of [Gray] gouges a dwelling place in your imagination and leaves it forever altered . . . Knocks the socks off almost everything written on this little island in the past fifty years . . . It increases the scope of fiction's possibilities-- "Independent"
At times exuberant, at times despairing, always vivid . . . Urban and wholly contemporary, yet suffused with the past . . . Lanark , in common with all great books, is still, and always will be, an act of resistance. It is part of the system of whispers and sedition and direct communion, one voice to another, we call literature--Janice Galloway "Guardian"
From a lesser writer, stygian darkness and baroque structure might see off a mass audience and reduce a book to cult status. In Gray's hands, the simple, direct prose found him a wide readership-- "The Times"
One of the landmarks of twentieth-century fiction . . . Lanark changed the landscape of Scottish fiction, opening up the imaginative territory inhabited today by writers such as A.L. Kennedy, James Kelman and Irvine Welsh-- "Guardian"
One of the seminal works of Scottish literature, a book credited with kick-starting Scotland's literary renaissance-- "Sunday Times"
Probably the greatest novel of the century . . . It marked the beginning of a new era-- "Observer"
Remarkable . . . Lanark is a work of loving and vivid imagination, yielding copious riches--William Boyd "Times Literary Supplement"
This extraordinary masterpiece . . . is profoundly perceptive about the ways in which our society is destroying itself. Yet it manages to be funny and is written in a beautifully lucid prose-- "Times Literary Supplement"
I was absolutely knocked out by Lanark. I think it's the best in Scottish literature this century--IAIN BANKS
It was time Scotland produced a shattering work of fiction in the modern idiom. This is it . . . [Gray is] the best Scottish novelist since Sir Walter Scott--ANTHONY BURGESS