“Utterly irresistible. [Self’s] nervy, irreverent, exhilarating prose—incorporating street slang, pop culture, and a manic wit—rips along with the take-no-prisoners power of a young Bellows or Roth.” —Dan Cryer, Newsday

“One of the most ingeniously creative, hallucinogenic books to come along in a long time.” —Thomas J. Brady, The Philadelphia Inquirer

“If authors are guides to the unknown . . . then Self, with all his several coats of humor and irony and cleverness, is the Beatrice you want for your trip to the underworld.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles Times Book Review

“How the Dead Live overflows with rhetorical ecstasy—arabesques of assonance and alliteration, puns peppering every paragraph, chiasmus turning clause after clause back on themselves like a hall of mirrors, page upon page enacting a giant oxymoron: loathing as glee.” —Carey Harrison, San Francisco Chronicle

“Combine Katherine Anne Porter’s Granny Weatherall with Jonathan Swift’s satiric take on humanity, and you still won’t approach what’s going on in Will Self’s latest book.” —Judy Budz, New York Daily News

“There must be a special place in hell for writers like Will Self. Some kind of Faustian literary pact seems the only way to account for nine rabidly original books in as many years. . . . Exuberant and fast-moving . . . By imagining the lives of the dead, Self is of course asking hard questions about how and why we live.” —Zsuzsi Gartner, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

“Scathingly satiric and prophetic . . . Self’s novel will surely figure on best-book lists this year.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“[How the Dead Live] may even be [Self’s] best work yet. What’s even more encouraging for admirers of Self’s work is that it gets better as it goes along.” —Chris Wright, The Boston Phoenix

“[Lily Bloom] is an angrier, testier cousin to Daisy Goodwill, Carol Shields’ good-natured Everywoman in The Stone Diaries. . . . Will Self’s literary magic makes Lily Bloom, a plant destined to shrivel rather than flourish, entirely unforgettable. Out of her long, mournful dying, her strange and tormented life and stranger afterlife, he has fashioned the most poignant, gut-wrenching art.” —Dan Cryer, Newsday

“The irreverent Self’s deft use of parody compels us to reexamine our attitudes towards life’s last gasps.” —Time Out New York

“[A] blistering critique of our excesses at the end of the twentieth century.” —David Farkas, The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

“How the Dead Live is the work of a novelist at the height of his powers. It is a horror story, a love-me-do story, a full-frontal assault on the seven deadly sins—and a celebration of them. . . . [Self’s] verbal fireworks are fueled by real anger and grief. Life may be grotty but he has proved that literature can still be great.” —Mark Sanderson, The Evening Standard (London)

“Superbly morbid . . . How the Dead Live is gloriously the work of a ‘demented moralist’ to borrow Lily Bloom’s suggestive phrase. But it seems to make the transition for Self from the anarchic visions of Hunter Thompson to the sober judgements of Dean Swift.” —Matt Seaton, Esquire UK

“Here is a long work of fiction to rank alongside the short story collections and novellas produced in a prolific period of creativity since [Self’s] prize-winning debut in 1991. Here, too, is a long-awaited evidence of a compassionate underbelly to the shell of Self’s intellectual and imaginative virtuosity. For the first time I felt myself moved by his writing.” —Martyn Bedford, Literary Review