“Compelling, slow-burning, and written in elegant, unforced prose that draws you in.”
—Time Out London
“The Honeymoon is a startling debut. Completely engaging, profoundly moving, and hard to forget, Justin Haythe’s stunning novel is full of pleasures. The Honeymoon is more than a promising beginning—it is an ambitious and accomplished novel of the first order.”
—Peter Cameron
“Beautifully handled . . . Lovely, subtle writing, with humour and tenderness.”
—The Bookseller Star Choice
“The Honeymoon is so beautifully written, the world it delineates is so sophisticated and the characters are so subtle and complex, that I found it hard to believe that this is Justin Haythe’s first novel. Already I can’t wait for the next.”
—Margot Livesey
“The writing is shapely and crafted; the characters glow.”
—GraceAnne A. DeCandido, Booklist
“Justin Haythe’s elegiac Jamesian debut is graceful and evocative. Deservedly long-listed for this year’s Man Booker Prize, it possesses the same cool appeal as does Damon Galgut’s The Good Doctor. . . . The characterization is adroit and the prose is assured and formal as well as attractively conversational. . . . There are echoes of Somerset Maugham and Ford Madox Ford as well as U.S. masters such as William Maxwell and Peter Taylor. . . . A novel of many wonderful moments . . . this beautiful, eloquent novel looks to the best of both English and U.S. writing.”
—Eileen Battersby, The Irish Times
“An elaborate unsettling character study . . . Haythe’s prose is smooth and probing.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A recasting of Ian McEwan’s disquieting ode to creepy Venice, The Comfort of Strangers, complete with requisite unexpected bloodshed. But The Honeymoon is more than a mere retread. It’s awfully close to being a peer: a sophisticated take on all the big stuff (love, class, death, Bellinis) whose evanescent prose shimmers like mist rising off the Grand Canal.”
—Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times
“Justin Haythe has constructed a subtle, disturbing and enigmatic novel. . . . With its themes of dysfunction and dislocation shifting beneath an apparently gilded existence, The Honeymoon carries echoes of Ford Madox Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald. . . . Through its uneasy, compelling narrator, The Honeymoon emerges as a substantial achievement, a beguiling and significant new work.”
—Tom Penn, The Times Literary Supplement (London)