RaveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)More subdued than some of his earlier fiction, particularly in its examination of late style ... Much of Coe’s book is set in the 1970s. The Wilder that Coe gives us is painfully aware that his Mitteleuropean light comedy, with its touches of elegance and ennui, is now seen as old-fashioned ... By the end of his novel, Coe elegantly brings together Calista’s and Wilder’s worlds ... These impulses to give to one another, whether in everyday acts of kindness or in those of transcendent creativity, are not so different, Coe suggests. In this way, he collapses his habitual divisions, reuniting mortals with the gods of art.
