I am protective enough of the strange, idiosyncratic beauty of this book to worry in turn that some readers might not be up to the challenge of following his more baroque trains of thought ... A testament to the novel’s powers of enchantment; it seduces you into thinking like a child again ... Clune has achieved a remarkable sleight of genre, threading realism’s dull needle with a semi-magical thread.
Clune doesn’t choose between what we might describe as the poetic and the novelistic, the mystic and the naturalistic, explanations of Nick’s experience. When it comes to time and consciousness, Clune’s perennial topics, visionary perception is perhaps just a deeper form of realism.
A novel that runs more on vibes than plot or character ... The novel is heavy with impending violence, but despite the foreboding there is no climactic event ... The book feels inescapably adolescent ... Some readers may be hypnotised by Clune’s slippery, sensual prose. I found it muggy and oppressive — like being stuck with a bunch of stoners who refuse to open the windows.
Remarkable for the honesty of its treatment of both mental illness and adolescence. It shows more successfully than any other book I’ve read how these can be experienced as black magic ... Clune is brilliant on the loss of control and exaggeration of terror that follows ... There are trade-offs to fiction that strives to be honest. Here, one is that the other characters never fully become people. They’re external experiences that inform the way Nicholas relates to his own mind ... A reader who approaches Pan expecting the usual rewards of a coming-of-age story will be sorely disappointed. It offers not answers but visions ... When we close the book, we find ourselves in a larger world.
A peculiar coming-of-age comedy that covers the genre’s regular beat...while also doubling as a philosophical horror story about nothing less than the problem of being alive ... In this stylish and unsettling novel, the greatest fear is that inside your head is the only place to be.
Sagacious ... Clune’s narrative has a powerful beginning and Nicks’ voice has a vitality filled with wit, humor, and all around teenage-ness that is fairly intoxicating ... What Clune leaves readers with is the suggestion of a possible underlying connection between mental illness and an elevation of intuition and insight.
Clune unfurls breathtaking pages-long descriptions of Nick’s disordered thinking, and as Nick faces the limits of writing as therapy, the narrative barrels toward a frightening and enigmatic ending. This staggering coming-of-age saga is tough to shake.
