About Book Marks
Recent Reviews
Flora Carr
Positive The Times Literary Supplement (UK) A bold and intimate retelling ... Much of the novel’s power comes from its pungent atmosphere. The realities of the prolonged confinement of four women in a single room are well evoked ... The prose, too, can be a little overblown. Yet in general it maintains a sharp immediacy in keeping with the bristling antagonisms and power plays that take place within the castle walls.
Alice Winn
Positive The Guardian (UK) The novel changes too. Gone is the languorous, yearning atmosphere of its early pages; here instead is a brisk, cold-hearted dealing out of death ... Despite the effectiveness of much of this, and despite Ellwood’s reflection that the realities of war are now \'brighter and clearer than all the literature he had ever read\', at times events can seem a little secondhand. The action is oddly weightless ... Still, there is much to like. The cast of characters is highly enjoyable ... The rush of the plot, alternating between the perspectives of Ellwood and Gaunt, takes us through the shattering events of 1914-18 and affectingly shows us the marks it leaves on them. It is a pity that these events, and the literary conventions used to depict them, to an extent overpower the deeper resonances of Ellwood and Gaunt’s transgressive and individual relationship. That could have been the most interesting world of all.
Irene Solà
Rave The Guardian (UK) Set among the villages, forests and rivers of the Pyrenees, the book builds a layered history of the area while focusing primarily on one family ... This democratic approach to storytelling works remarkably well. The chapter told from the perspective of the dog is one of the best: funny, intimate and sad. The witches we hear from are enjoyably cackling and foul ... an out-of-town hiker is superbly patronising ... Other sections are slightly less good. Hilari, in particular, hasn’t much to say except effusive slogans ... Solà’s prose, excellently translated from the original Catalan, is expansive and tactile. Her sentences accumulate, running along, taking in as much as possible, senses alert ... There are numerous memorable moments of deeply felt contact—with the landscape, with animals, or between people ... Solà convincingly implicates everyone in the quickening pace of history and environmental decline; there are apocalyptic warnings. Will they be heeded? In the meantime, this attentive, playful, responsive novel makes an excellent case for stopping and listening.
Adrian Nathan West
Rave The Guardian (UK) ... slim, sad, comic and sharply observed ... The minor characters are eye-catching, too ... West, a superb translator by profession – his translation of When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut was shortlisted for the International Booker prize – writes surgically precise prose. The young man notes his father’s verbal quirks and describes his peculiar gait with the detachment of a doctor examining his patient ... West’s achievement, in this subtle and delightful book, is to have rendered failure in strikingly handsome terms.
Joshua Cohen
Positive The Spectator (UK) Cohen is at his best with chaotic, everyone-shouting-at-once set pieces ... The Netanyahus, like Cohen’s previous novels, is driven by the momentum of its prose. It has a freewheeling, all-consuming style which frequently turns up unexpected delights. There are nicely odd verbs ... There are vivid similes ... Slowing things down are a series of lectures on Zionism. Dour and rambling, they interrupt the narrative, much as Netanyahu darkens the door of Blum. This is intentionally wearisome, but wearisome nonetheless. Fortunately, this is a surprising novel, full of quirks and explosive moments, and, all in all, Dr Netanyahu proves a welcome guest.
John Lanchester
Positive The Guardian (UK) [A] collection of eight contemporary ghost stories, with the horror stemming from the irresistible power that technology has over us. In real life we are obsessed, distracted, impolite, floating through a world of unravelling human bonds and never-ending notifications. Could fiction be worse? ... The stories are uneasy rather than frightening ... He is also socially alert; the tensions and disconnections of modern families are nicely illuminated. Lanchester conjures a sad shadow world all the more scary for being a mirror image of our own. These entertainments are brisk, vinegar-sharp satires that horrify and amuse in equal measure; an alarming reality check. Like a lesson in etiquette, it’s good medicine.