The Mighty Franks

`The glory of this book is its richly evoked world ... Michael is an Isherwood camera ... I doubt you'll read a better memoir this year. The Mighty Franks is full of humour and brittle irony. In Aunt Hankie, Frank has created a great new nonfictional character: an indelible wonder of dark depths and hypnotic high style' Guardian

`A witty, moving account ... beautifully written and timely ' TLS

`There is a lastingly sane quality to his riveting memoir, The Mighty Franks, that's reminiscent of To Kill A Mockingbird' The Telegraph

`Move Over, Royal Tenenbaums: Meet The Mighty Franks ... probing and radiantly polished' New York Times

`An utterly magical book. Michael Frank inherits Truman Capote's glorious ability to recreate the past in an act of exquisite, knowing retrieval ... I hung on every word, spying through his child's eyes. This is intense and lyrical prose: I never wanted it to stop.' Philip Hoare

'P.G. Wodehouse could not have invented Michael Frank's aunt. An astonishing story of a relationship and a family that ends up the wrong side up and inside-out. Beautiful, strange and true.' Ian Sansom

`Entertainingly, and sometimes beautifully, told. Frank, as his aunt once told him, can write' Observer

`The Mighty Franks is very easy to love and very hard to put down.' George Hodgman

`To paraphrase Tolstoy, interesting families are unhappy in mysterious ways, and in this subtle memoir full of hard-won wisdom, Michael Frank gives us an indelible portrait of his own.' Judith Thurman

`Crackling with sorrow and wit, Michael Frank has written a gorgeous, moving and intensely compassionate memoir that will stay with me for a long, long time.' Molly Antopol

`Be careful when you start reading The Mighty Franks since you won't be able to stop. This portrait of an extraordinary family is a work of art.' Jean Strouse

`Frank does a subtle job of evoking his larger-than life aunt Hankie, who both adored and isolated him' Gaby Wood, Telegraph, Books of the Year