Love and Other Thought Experiments

Critics Review

• Sophie Ward is a dazzling talent who writes like a modern-day F Scott Fitzgerald

  Elizabeth Day

• a genuinely affective family narrative that is emotionally compelling as well as intellectually stimulating. Surely not since Jostein Gaarder’s 1991 novel Sophie’s World, has an author produced such an imaginative and original synthesis of fiction and philosophy

  Irish Times

• In Love and Other Thought Experiments, Ward proposes to alter the colour of her readers’ minds . . . But the success of Ward’s venture inevitably depends on the quality of the writing. This is often moving, exuberant and sensitive. We care about her characters and share their hopes and fears. Ward’s investigation and practice of empathy is easily the best thing in the book.

  the Guardian

• Brimming with close observation . . . the sheer literary ambition on show is impressive, with Ward producing a highly original first novel that echoes European experimentalists such as Kundera and Krasznahorkai

  Spectator

• Ward has achieved something quite extraordinary: a super-smart metaphysical romp that’s also warm, wistful and heartfelt. A book that declares, winningly, that just because it’s all in your head, it doesn’t mean it’s not real.

  the Daily Telegraph

• It is an act of such breath-taking imagination, daring and detail that the journey we are on is believable and the debate in the mind non-stop. There are elements of Doris Lessing in the writing – a huge emerging talent here

• Ward’s ingenious fiction debut stands in a tradition of philosophical fiction: Voltaire’s Candide, Sartre’s Nausea . . . [Her] writing is often moving, exuberant and sensitive . . . gifts of bravura wit and imagination

  Guardian

• Love and Other Thought Experiments is a towering literary achievement. Sophie’s prose is exquisite and her storytelling powerful, poignant and utterly gripping. An astonishing debut

  Ruth Hogan, author of The Keeper of Lost Things

• Philosophy meets fiction in this beguiling and intriguing novel of minds, hearts, other worlds, love, death and everything in between. It’s a book that dances and dazzles with ideas and left me thinking long after I finished it
  Sophie Kinsella

• Sophie Ward’s writing is as clear as a knife sounded against a glass and just as attention-grabbing. Fiction, fable and philosophy combined together with real human folly and fate at its heart. This book is as hard to pin down as it’s impossible to forget

• I loved Love and Other a Thought Experiments. Each chapter works as a story, immersive and compelling, and then the wider structure takes over, the harmonics sound out, and it accumulates into a universe of its own. Really ingenious, full of wisdom, full of love

• Love and Other Thought Experiments is acutely original and thought-provoking. From beginning to end it is beautifully observed, intelligently constructed and deftly handled. Love and Other Thought Experiments is as multi-faceted as a diamond; a true philosophical hoard; a book I shall always treasure

• Sophie Ward is an innovative and highly sophisticated writer

• Elegant, erudite, brave and moving, Sophie Ward’s debut is a stunning achievement

• Love and Other Thought Experiments is brilliant and playful. From the first page you know you’re in a unique and compelling universe of Ward’s making

• A game changer

  Rena Brannan, Diva magazine