MixedSunday Times (UK)Part thriller, part treasure hunt and part love story ... Lena becomes involved with Armin, a young Chechen refugee living in Berlin. This is by far the least successful aspect of the novel. Hamilton’s characters rarely convince as anything other than ciphers, there to develop themes of migration, identity and prejudice. It’s not always subtle ... The Pages is not intended as an act of ventriloquism, but you do occasionally long for Roth’s arch authorial universe, that complex fated world where you simultaneously believe in a character while knowing they are doomed ... What’s never in doubt, however, is Hamilton’s love of Roth’s writing and compassion for him. He writes about the Austrian author and his wife, Friedl, with a rich, sympathetic lyricism ... The chapter towards the end where he visits her in a Vienna sanatorium...is profound and heartbreaking.
Joshua Ferris
RaveThe Sunday Times (UK)Gradually, through sections headed Farce, Fiction and The Facts, the caustic humour that defined Ferris’s previous works is swapped for something grander, more lyrical, attempting to draw a parallel between the modern job of the author and the manner in which we curate our own lives ... The metatextual chaos that ensues, with everyone pitching in their own doubtful versions of \'the truth\', is simultaneously narratively courageous and utterly hilarious ... Where it leaves the reader, however, feels special and unique, with the realisation that the value of a person lies not in their \'market worth\', or the so-called truth of their story, but in the lies and fictions they tell themselves (and others) to live.
