PositiveThe Telegraph (UK)Hunters in the Snow is an ambitious, almost impossibly wide-ranging book. It shares the structure of Jimmy’s unfinished history: each section is loosely based around a different historical character. But it interweaves these passages with childhood memories and the present day, straying nonchalantly from medieval history to a trip to the local tip ... Unfortunately, the book’s attempts to thread the historical past with recent childhood memories are at times remarkably clumsy ... Where the novel is most original, though, is in tone. If a good writer is someone who matches style to subject, this novel is very promising indeed. It appropriates the characters’ world of academia to highly stylised effect ... Where complexity is intended, opacity is often the result, ultimately making this less enjoyable than it ought to be.
