RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)One of the many achievements of this exhilarating book of stories from the young American writer Anthony Veasna So is its exploration of identity — the way each tale holds questions of selfhood up to the light, and shows its many facets from every angle ... So’s talent justifies the hype ... a novelistic quality to the collection. And So’s distinctive voice is ever-present: mellifluous, streetwise and slightly brash, at once cynical and big-hearted.
John Le Carre
PositiveThe Sunday Times (UK)...le Carré...in an always crowded arena, continues to demonstrate prowess. Agent Running in the Field may not have quite the strength of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold but although a little stiff, perhaps even occasionally flat-footed, once le Carré has limbered up there is no mistaking that he is still one of the masters of the game ...The novel does at times feel anachronistic. Le Carré’s style, particularly in the early chapters, is stilted and old-fashioned ... But once le Carré’s game is in full swing, he is close to unbeatable. Agent Running in the Field is a perfectly tight thriller, somehow managing to strip everything back to the essential plot without its direction ever becoming predictable ... Meanwhile, the book finds space for a quality arguably less prevalent in le Carré’s earlier work. This is a novel about spies and statecraft, and about marriage and parenthood, too, with a mellow, affectionate wisdom to round out the drama and political zeal.
Deborah Levy
RaveThe Times (UK)... the story of a man who has fallen apart, and it is laid out in a way that is artfully disjointed, so that in spite of the gaps and the unorthodox telling the result is coherent and rather beautiful ... this style has a quiet rhythm that soon becomes irresistible, and its deceptively simple phrasing often conceals tremendous force. There is lots of humour in Saul’s deadpan nonchalance and it delivers piercing jabs of clarity as certain pieces fall into place ... Most of all, though, Levy’s skilfulness with narrative proves why this is her third novel in a row on the Booker prize list. The fragmentary portrait coheres because, as they fill more of the frame, her disparate pieces are revealed to be ingeniously connected. And it moves you because, gradually, the developing picture exposes not only what Saul has temporarily forgotten but things he had disastrously always failed to see ... Reading this novel provides conclusive evidence that you are in the hands of a master ... don’t merely read this novel. Treat yourself and read it twice.
