PositiveThe Irish Times (IRE)... a happy book about a happy band ... the narrative features walk-on appearances by many of the great and good of the time...This recurring conceit can amuse or annoy in equal measure, depending on one’s attitude and patience ... What mostly differentiates Mitchell’s foray is the nostalgic aspect occasioned by the fact that all of this happened firmly 50 years ago. Also, rather than being written from one character’s perspective as a pseudo-memoir, Mitchell employs multiple points of view ... The novel is very good at hinting at the difficulties of being a woman in an otherwise male group, or indeed of being a female solo artist, in the late ’60s. Similarly, it also alludes to the vicissitudes of being gay when homosexuality was still illegal. It accomplishes all of this without indulging in the smug, retrospective moral superiority so common in historical revisionism ... Remarkably, considering they were mostly manufactured by their manager, the level of camaraderie and co-operation between the players is almost too good to be true ... It is notoriously difficult to capture the thrill of playing music, much less describe the music itself, in prose, but Mitchell succeeds for the most part, although he does rely on quoting lyrics as much as musical expertise to get this point across. Despite the idealisation of the band’s internal workings, this is an enjoyable read for anyone who likes music and is interested in the period.
Colum McCann
RaveThe Irish Times (IRE)Some readers may find the refractive structure of the text, and its sheer length, off-putting, but they are probably the kind of people who favour figurative over nonrepresentational art, or easy-listening musical arrangements over modal, atonal or dissonant compositions – in short, those who prefer to spend their free time in pursuits other than engaging with challenging, demanding and unsettling works of art. Such criticism would also fail to take into account the heft of the human story which pulses through these pages ... The courage with which McCann walks his vertiginous tightrope here, given the potential for alienating the more militant on either side, is commendably audacious. He is already, it hardly needs to be reiterated here, one of the finest writers of his generation, Irish or otherwise. Apeirogon can only further consolidate his reputation.
Will Self
MixedThe Irish Times...the problem with this rambling and random, overlong yarn: as John Cooper Clarke has said, when deflecting questions about his own lost decade, \'all junkies’ stories are the same\' ... Similarly, knocking satire out of treatment programmes has been done previously many times and better, for example in AL Kennedy’s novel Paradise ... In a sense, given the bizarrely inventive nature of much of his fiction, Self is too smart to be writing this sort of book. What’s more, he knows it, and it shows. Even he seems, at times, rather bored by the endless round of copping, shooting, copping. Which prompts the question: why is he writing about it, without saying much that is new? Contractual obligations, perhaps? Let the reader decide.
