Perhaps some of these apparent loose ends are tied up in the digital edition of Arcadia, available as an app that includes both extra material and tools for tracking the storylines. That said, most readers will probably prefer the carefully orchestrated book version. “Qui moderatur tempus intelligit omnia,” goes the Lytten family motto: 'He who controls time understands everything.' Doesn’t that actually describe the art of plot construction and its master, Iain Pears?
The allusiveness of this novel, both explicit and implicit, is a major part of its allure. While its narrative can be enjoyed purely on a surface level, it resonates so cleverly and deeply with so many other works that it both borrows their luminosity and confers its own newer radiance on its predecessors.
...while there’s usually a pleasurable sense that the numerous narrative entanglements are well designed and just perplexing enough to inspire curiosity (for the most part), the physical landscapes often feel anonymous and inexplicit ... Not quite so successfully, Arcadia leads readers into an escalating series of interconnected textual worlds and deliberately avoids helping them to achieve any final utopian vision. Find your own way home, this book seems to tell them.
Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay[/caption]
