The Poison That Fascinates
A highly original new novel.  The prose is poetic in the true sense: precise as a scalpel, lyrical without being indulgent, leaving conventionally important things potently unspelled-out. But the story, driven by a mystery whose solution precipitates the climax, is unputdownable. —Ruth Padel, The Guardian

Predestination haunts this tale. The clues to its finish, proud and brazen, are riveted into every one of the 26 chapters. Clement is fabulous at laying down a backing track of gothic Grand Guignol…(a)sense of operatic tragedy (is) at the heart of this novel. It is almost written to be sung. It is almost music, awash with a discordance that rises up at its very end in a wailing vibrato of dire consummation…it proves yet again what a marvellous writer Clement is. She contains all this power in a prose that is simple and simply beguiling. A cri de Coeur. —Tom Adair, The Scotsman

The Poison that Fascinates is an astonishing novel, every line alive, leading as if effortlessly to a shocking climax almost on the final page, a work of power and originality. — Alan Sillitoe (author of The Loneliness of the long Distance Runner)

Jennifer Clement writes like a painter. Her books are vivid with colour and detail, each colour-soaked page leading us irresistibly to the next, giving us fresh vision as to how stories can be made. —Kirsty Gunn (author of Featherstone and The Boy and the Sea)

Widow Basquiat
'Powerful… this memoir has a kind of awesome beauty.' —The Bookseller

"Widow Basquiat is different...builds up into an engrossing narrative which details nearly all the pivotal events of Basquiat's short life. It's a refreshing angle on a story that could easily have veered into myth-making or melodrama....Clement offers far more clues to the cryptic symbols which litter his paintings than any art critic could." —The London Times

"A brilliant account of the relationship between Basquiat and his muse and lover...a compelling book that leaves a giant sized lump in the throat...Clement hypnotises us with a vivid portrait of Basquiat, powerfully evoking his inventiveness as an artist" —Independent on Sunday

"Clement says she wanted the book to be 'like a painting or a piece of music that came out of that time'. It comes pretty close. Poetic, full of funny, bizarre anecdotes, Widow Basquiat is the kind of book that makes you want to take the next flight to New York. There may be death in it, but it also has a sense of life that leaps off the page...it is also deeply romantic." —The Big Issue (Scotland)

"There is more than one way to write up an artist's life. Straight with pictures or oblique, like this, full of poetic dashes, outs and slaps, diversions and secret glimpses...An unusual book, to say the least." —Buzz

"A starkly beautiful elegy to a painter and high-strung muse, by a poet whose gossamer language morphs itself into shapes as jagged, disturbing and righteously angry as Basquiat's work itself...Clement is a striking, spiky overseer and her poetry exists in economy instead of frugality: the bright, peeled-back eyes of someone who saw - and actually observed - everything."— i-D

"An interesting take on the Basquiat legend" Uncut

"With its simplicity and breathless rapidity Clement's prose is reminiscent of Basquiat's life and painting...an entertaining and poignant read." — City Life

"Breathlessly recounted" —The Big Issue

"a beautifully evocative, poetic memoir...Basquiat was aware of the criteria with which posterity would judge him. Widow Basquiat should be part of those criteria." —The Herald

'Essential summer reading.' —Vogue

A True Story Based on Lies
"You would be forgiven for mistaking Clement’s first novel for a book of poetry, such is its lyricism and lightness of touch; yet what we are given here is a narrative that not only pays tribute to Clement’s background as a poet, but uses the tricks of the master storyteller to delight and engross." —The London Times

"A bold and innovative novel. The rich mixture of the outlandishly real and the hyperfabulistic has a certain superstitious power over the reader. Jennifer Clement employs poetry's ability to mirror thought… superbly drawn" —The Times Literary Supplement

“A poet whose gossamer language morphs into shapes as jagged, disturbing and righteously angry as the issues she addresses.” —I.D.

"A warm, compassionate novel that describes much cruelty." —The List

"A lyrically told, deeply moving tale." —Sunday Tribune

"The unfolding emotional and physical complications are fraught with trauma, which the writer’s particular style heightens into an emotionally wracking story." —Big Issue

"A True Story's poetry is obvious, simple, beautiful and clear, like liturgical music." —The Scotsman

"This is an unusual and graceful book that, in beautiful and precise prose, tells of unimaginable human suffering and manages, in an unexpected climax, to suggest at least the possibility of redemption."— The Internationalist

Jennifer Clement: New and Selected Poems
"These are the first poems I've read by Jennifer Clement, but the writing's as memorable as her novel A True Story Based on Lies. Jennifer Clement makes elegant and precise judgments of what and how much her poems should say. Her effortless (seeming) writing's a rare pleasure." —Jane Routh, Stride Magazine, UK