PositiveThe Spectator (UK)Much has been written of Toibin’s style, which at its worst confuses plainness with flatness and at its best hypnotises the reader into heightened sensitivity ... Toibin’s narrative voice, for all its omniscient chatter, is equally, teasingly discreet.
Don Paterson
PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)There is something Joycean in how Paterson destabilizes the voice ... This personal trench is the crux of Toy Fights, which should probably have finished shortly after. Instead, the last fifty pages follow Paterson on the pub, club and wedding circuit with a number of bands, where the lead guitarist’s vice of self-indulgence starts to infect his prose ... I would add that a book is a joy to review when it is a joy to quote, and on a verbal if not a structural level, Toy Fights is a work of dazzling craft.
