PanThe Times (UK)t’s not that his new novel, The Future Future, is without sex, it’s just that it’s all gone a bit flaccid, a common problem for those put under much scrutiny ... The obsequious tone of the novel might be forgivable were there anything to distract us from it. Thirlwell has never been interested in plot or character (he has relied on a Kundera-style moreish narratorial voice instead), but in The Future Future he takes the sprawling novel of ideas to the extreme. The novel bounces around like a pinball ... I say bring back the old Thirlwell. His early novels had many things wrong with them (not least an overly inflated sense of their greatness), but their playfulness and unabashed depictions of male desire are just what is missing from today’s literary scene, which, like The Future Future, has lost its libido.
Eliza Clark
PanThe Times (UK)It may be a fictionalised true crime book, but the depictions of torture are no less corrosive for being made up. It adds to what it’s trying to critique ... So glutted with teenage-speak, obscure online neologisms, references to Taylor Swift and lip gloss that it’s hard to imagine it being enjoyed by anyone over 30. Clark’s ideal readership is precisely those susceptible 16-year-olds she writes so accurately about ... The juvenility of the book is also apparent in its simplistic approach to morality ... The form of the book, which splices blog posts, texts and googled information, captures the feeling of darting between multiple tabs on a computer. But it also means the book lacks shape. In her bid to emulate the online world, Clark is too indiscriminate.
