Nightcrawling

«Uncompromising yet exhilaratingly charged by Mottley’s deep feeling and stylistic flair»

«Nineteen-year-old poet Leila Mottley has been hailed as the ‘voice of a generation’, a claim that seems less hyperbolic the more you read of her assured, moving and powerful fiction debut . . . Freighted with sentences of tough lyricism, it feels like an immense achievement»

«A rare and compelling meditation on the powerless . . . Not only a fearless investigation of justice, guilt and prejudice, but an allegory of the potential power of speech, narrative and fiction itself . . . Nightcrawling marks the dazzling arrival of a young writer with a voice and vision you won’t easily get out of your head»

«She whips through the plot, packing poetic punch after punch . . . Now that Mottley has found her own voice, America – and readers in the UK – will be watching»

«Both a searing depiction of sexual exploitation and a gripping account of a struggle for survival… Grimly captivating … Rich and inventive»

«An uncommonly assured debut . . . Nightcrawling is written with a poet’s ear and a novelist’s sense of character, structure and ambience»

«Mottley’s fluid, instinctive writing soars . . . This feels like a remarkable debut, one that holds an illuminating if unflattering mirror to modern America. It is exciting to wonder what might lie ahead for this writer»

«Kiara is as virtuous and put-upon as any heroine in Dickens. But she is always a lively presence on the page even at her most downtrodden, thanks to her expressive narrative voice … the risks she takes generally pay off so well that one finishes the book grumbling: nobody who has just turned twenty has any business writing this well»

«Leila Mottley has a poet’s delicate touch when she tells us the most brutal, heart-crushing truths. This is an electrifying debut»

«Nightcrawling is a scorching, incredibly readable book that takes seriously the task of readerly provocation on every page. Get ready. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter. Leila Mottley is here»

«The writing in Leila Mottley's Nightcrawling erupts and flows like lava, makes hot bright an Oakland that runs the city's uncontrollable brilliance, its destructive and generative veins the same, Mottley's energetic writing here too, bursts at the seams of every page, pushing you deeper into a story you can't help but continue swallowing, stay thirsty for, while it swallows you whole»

«Leila Mottley has an extraordinary gift. She writes with the humility and sparkle of a child, but with the skill and deft touch of a wizened, seasoned storyteller»

«Leila Mottley’s commanding debut, inspired by the life events of one woman’s struggle for body and soul against crushing exploitation, is fierce and devastating, rendered with electrifying urgency by this colossal young talent»

«A blistering exploration of power»

«This book proves its author is a literary star in the making»

«Unflinching, poetic and deeply resonant, this stunning debut from Oakland teen Leila Mottley marks the arrival of an extraordinary new voice»

«With its powerful poetry and courageous, unsparing vision, Nightcrawling is more than just a magnificent debut novel. It is a bid, by this prodigiously gifted young writer, to heal a broken world»