RaveThe New York Times Book ReviewInventory reads like a dam-burst, then, an overwhelming of Derry, of Northern Ireland, with memory, its coursing rivers, undercurrents, treacherous accumulations ... Anderson too has that...uncanny ability to draw image from object, to turn matter into a point of ingress into the past—so much so that you feel your own memory coming alive in tandem with his. His uncluttered, graceful prose transmits the tactile experience of his childhood while grounding it in historical context, in a way that makes the details of one’s existence seem at once specific and pointless ... Anderson evokes the feeling of eternal boyhood despite the carnage ... it’s as if he can’t take his eye off these memories, to the point that he sees afterimages, remembers them like \'a fluorescent baton, the swing of it leaving a momentary arc in the air and in my vision.\'
Mark O'Connell
PositiveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)... refreshing candour ... While [O\'Connell] doesn’t succumb to the disturbing fashion for anti-natalism, though he looks seriously at this world view, he does repeatedly point out one’s personal culpability for climate change. This is well intentioned, but you might argue that self-flagellation lets the states and corporations laying waste to the planet off the hook – the idea of a carbon footprint, after all, was popularized by BP ... filled with a colourful, largely reprehensible cast; these people are simultaneously idiosyncratic and predictable in the way grotesques tend to be ... O’Connell is at his best when curious and enquiring, and he proves a perceptive interviewer, sensitive to the roles history and individual psychology may have played in apocalyptic world views ... O’Connell is sharp to the point of deflating those he encounters, ridiculing them and the \'libertarian lizard-brain\' by predicting a post-apocalyptic world akin to Mad Max but populated by roaming bands of Rotary Club members ... It feels as if O’Connell knew where he wanted to go, what sorts of people he wanted to meet, and what impression he wanted to elicit, before he set off. That is not to say that he is lacking in self-awareness ... One wonders whether O’Connell is searching not for epiphanies but a kind of comfort, absolution or escape...Yet he is acutely conscious that he is involved in everything that is unfolding ... This dual sense of dread and compassion, and the struggle between them, powers the book. His final chapter, set during a heatwave so intense that wildfires are breaking out in the Arctic Circle, is moving and reflective.
