The Octopus Man

Critics Review

• What an astonishing work The Octopus Man is. Schizophrenia is not an easy condition to write about. It scares us. It scares those who live with it even more. But there is a kind of beauty, comedy and transcendence in the way that Jasper Gibson takes us inside the mind of Tom, which lifts the spirits and shows that disorders like his can give as well as take away

  Stephen Fry

• An exceptional work . . . What a brilliant and necessary book. A funny, heart-expanding story of a man trapped between the God-like voice in his head and society’s desire for him to be ‘normal.’ It’s a deeply compassionate portrait and I felt the frustration of battling a broken mental healthcare system, and the guilt and hope of everyone who loves poor, cheeky, troubled Tom and wants so badly for him to get better

  DOUGLAS STUART, author of Shuggie Bain, Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize Award

• Absolutely wondrous. The characterisation, the humour, the whole glorious swirl of it

  NIALL GRIFFITHS, author of Broken Ghost, Winner of the 2020 Welsh Book of the Year Award

• Magnificent novel… beautifully rendered and very funny. The bedraggled England here is as vivid as Jez Butterworth’s version in Jerusalem. Gibson is surely the playwright’s heir in vision and wit… You will be hooked, you will laugh and possibly cry. And you will know by page four that this hilarious and compassionate novel really matters.

  THE SPECTATOR

• Gibson… has achieved something remarkable… full of jokes, capers, black ironies and a wild juxtaposition between the mundane and the transcendental.

  Book of the Month in THE OLDIE

• Deliriously good!

  ES MAGAZINE

• Jasper Gibson’s bravura new novel is timely and revelatory… Gibson skilfully combines black comedy with a compassionate and searching examination of what madness is and whether “normal” life is itself a state of mind.

  THE OBSERVER

• The Octopus Man reminds us that behind the words “mental health” lies a universe of wild creativity, humanity, and spanking big life. A beautiful thing, this is The Dharma Bums meet Clozapine. Now is the time for this book

  DBC PIERRE, author of Booker Prize-winning Vernon God Little

• The Octopus Man was a joy to read. I cried with laughter and I just plain cried. It is one of the wittiest and most humane pictures of a person and their mind – a timely conversation about mental health from within the perspective of the subject. It’s a beautiful book and so incredibly funny. It was astounding to me how funny it was sometimes.

  JOHNNY FLYNN

• A man suffering from schizophrenia doesn`t sound like it has comic potential, but this novel shows good storytelling can always confound expectations.

  TIMES BOOKS NEWSLETTER

• Funny. Disturbing. Brilliant

  LILY ALLEN

• An engaging novel about a man with a voice in his head evokes the radical politics of the anti-psychiatry movement.

  GUARDIAN

• A compassionate, witty novel about being lost in the maze of the British mental health system.

  THE INDEPENDENT

• Cleverly written . . . very funny, and it can be interpreted in a number of different ways

  Sydney Morning Herald

• A brave, bold and brilliant exploration of the forces that drive us mad and the wild, crazy journey’s back to ourselves and each other. Scary, hilarious and touching. I loved it

  DR JACQUI DILLON, Hearing Voices Network