Critical Praise

"Firmin is one of the most enjoyably surprising books I've read for a long time. It's a work of great originality: whenever I thought it was going to be one sort of book, it gently swerved aside and became another. This suggests an uncertainty of purpose, but that's not the impression at all. It's held together by the character of the narrator himself, a rat of deep humanity and intelligence, and the final impression is one of delicate tragedy. This really is a book like nothing else."

"Delicious. Firmin is a book that is written for Readers, that is, for people who have the book passion and for whom books are as real as anything else in life. Realer, perhaps."

"Surprising and moving meditation on the advantages (and disadvantages) of an entirely fictional life. Eloquent and witty,Firmin speaks for the book-loving rodent in all of us."

"An alternately whimsical and earnest paean to the joys of literature."

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