RaveFinancial Times (UK)... delights in exploring design’s potential to amplify meaning ... There’s no discernible corner of XX’s nearly 1,000 pages that hasn’t been meticulously considered; open it at random and there’s a good chance your attention will be grabbed — by a punk fanzine, a map of an imaginary planet, dialogue in the form of a Victorian music-hall poster, a cityscape constructed out of slashes, exclamation marks and other punctuation, a page of alien print . . . The text periodically tilts, sways or attenuates as the action requires, while the \'font design credits\' list 91 typefaces, many devised by the author ... Hughes’s overarching theme is how ideas, once encoded in print, bits or neurons, compete, evolve and re-express themselves, so the multiplicity of styles is more than apt. Besides, his story is lively enough to be energised rather than swamped by the graphical pyrotechnics.
Marlon James
PositiveFinancial TimesJames’s first novel is...wild stuff, this near-mythic tale of two preachers vying for the souls of a village community in 1950s Jamaica—but there’s such a thing as being too cautious. James’s slice of Caribbean gothic has terrific power and verve: it’s quite a debut.
Jon Wray
PositiveThe Financial Times...[a] clever, compelling novel ... It’s a great, complex pile-up of a plot, but Wray, one of Granta’s Best Young American Novelists in 2007, is equal to it, juxtaposing Waldy’s personal history with that of his forebears with unfailing skill, and deftly keeping up in the air the question of whether the family’s story is one of magnificent obsession or mental illness. The writing is similarly rich, teeming with quirky detail and sometimes arcane references ... If the torrent of minutiae at times seems merely whimsical, it is more than compensated for by Wray’s skilful pacing, deadpan wit and vivid way with words ... Yet it’s hard to shake off a nagging suspicion that there is less at stake here than is warranted by the novel’s historic sweep.
