Linguistically commodious, panoramically plotted, Praiseworthy’s 700-plus-page scale would have given Henry James a heart attack: it is a baggy monster, and more monstrous than most. Its vision is dark, humour tar-black, narration irrepressible, language roiling and rococo ... Long after the lesser concerns of contemporary fiction have ceased to matter, the work of Alexis Wright will remain.
Not only a satire. It is also an allegory and a tragedy, ambitious in scope and execution, a dirge for all things and beings – people, animals, the past and the future – that have been, and will be, lost ... Mind-altering ... Retaught me how to read.
Not an easy read. It does not care to be. Playful, formally innovative, multi-storied, allegorical, protean and dizzyingly exhilarating, it is long, lyrical and enraged ... There are few paragraphs, but every sentence flashes and disturbs, every chapter begins by exhorting an oracle to speak up.
