PositiveTimes Literary Supplement (UK)What readers might question is Miller’s ventriloquism. Stephen, we learn, flunked his A-Levels, joined the army, and served in Germany and Northern Ireland. Is this introspective, elegiac voice that of an alcoholic ex-squaddie ... Perhaps this question matters less than that of whether one wants to spend 280 pages in his company, from which there is no escape: The Slowworm’s Song is a novel without dialogue ... With all the scenes relayed in Stephen’s voice, the prose has an unremitting quality ... There is no easy resolution, and that is why The Slowworm’s Song, despite the unvarying voice – or indeed because of it – is so affecting. It is about truth, objective or otherwise, and about the attempts of flawed human beings to live with it.
