“[First Loves is] distinguished first by a very fine command of detail and carefully crafted structure; and secondly, by the most sensitive and delicate handling of sexual and adolescent matters ever seen in Singapore fiction.”

– Far Eastern Economic Review

“[Philip Jeyaretnam] works from an understanding of the language, a marvellous feel for words and clever eye for the idiosyncratic detail that marks and grows characters.”

— Business Times

“[Philip Jeyaretnam’s] concern at Singapore’s lack of a distinctive, coherent, local cultural and spiritual tradition emerges clearly throughout [Raffles Place Ragtime] ... Singaporean society is grounded on contradictions, especially between silent past and obsessive present, and between individual fulfilment and material success. In the interests of sanity, he [Philip] indicates it may well be necessary to give priority to the former over the latter. Raffles Place Ragtime was again short listed for the Commonwealth Writers Prize.”

— Peter Wicks, in Tigers in Paradise

“[Abraham's Promise is] a novel of regret for actions not taken and words unspoken, eloquent in the spareness of its prose and the gradual unveiling of the narrator's self-deception.”

— The New York Times

“...that rare thing in today's and a unique thing in Singaporean fiction, [Abraham's Promise is] a successful novel about a good man. It is a beautifully crafted work, as celebration of as well as a lament for Singapore's past, its calm measured sentences mirroring its narrator's educated mind.”

— The New Straits Times

“Character gives his fiction location and tone ... Abraham's Promise is charged with emotional and subjective power.”

— World Literature Today

“[Abraham's Promise] is a compelling, thoughtful and timely novel that raises many issues relevant not only to contemporary Singaporeans, but to a much wider global audience. It will prove useful material for examining how all of us carry the baggage of our past into our decisions about the future; how we cope with the gaps between our ideals, the current state of society, and the awful burden of trying to shape the latter more to the former's image...”

— Culture