Sophie and the Sibyl is wonderful; I was transfixed. It's not just the fiendishly clever blending of real-life and fiction, I was completely gripped all the way through. I love Sophie and Max. They are an Eliot hero and heroine but written for now. But most of all of course I love George Eliot, the Sibyl. I'm not sure now that I'll ever be able to read any novel by her in the same way again Kathryn Hughes Patricia Duncker's latest historical novel plays as heady an intellectual game with feminism and creativity as her cult debut Hallucinating Foucault did with sexuality and madness, the witty conceit here being to wrap the whole thing in the story of her namesake's dealings with George Eliot, whom she brings deliciously to life as a sly subversive. Erotic, funny, intensely evocative, Sophie and the Sibyl will prove a richly deserved game-changer for this novelist's novelist Patrick Gale Patricia Duncker should be made a DBE Louis de Bernieres