... brooding ... Power, a literary critic in London, surely must have been thinking of Graham Greene’s The Third Man when he wrote this elegant suspense novel ... like the best noir fiction, manages to be both suspenseful and cosmically destabilizing. Nothing and no one are what they first appear to be ... a superb suspense novel, imbued with moral and narrative complexity and an omnipresent low cloud cover of dread.
... elegant ... I greatly enjoyed the story within a story presented here, especially since Chris Power loosely draws from his own life to fill out the details, creating a third metaphysical layer for readers to unfold. Rarely have the ethics and craft of fictionalization made for such compelling, thrilling reading. Too often, the juxtaposition of genres—particularly one so vital as crime with the more inward-facing studies of the literary—makes for a dull or confusing read as authors choose the form of intellectualism over the function of entertainment. Mr. Power, however, deftly balances his influences to present a suspenseful yet still thoughtful novel of trust and belief and what we, writers or otherwise, owe to the people we spin our stories around.
... an elegant, atmospheric story of shadows and half-truths ... At times [Power's] descriptions of dinner parties and school runs recall the domestic autofiction of Karl Ove Knausgaard. But Power is a very different kind of writer — and A Lonely Man soon reveals itself as a taut, subtle, postmodern literary thriller written with an exacting command over its form ... delicately captures the melancholy of wintry Berlin, a familiar location from any number of Cold War spy novels and here serving as a stage set for Putin agents who may or may not be tailing Patrick. But just as it’s threatening to become a tale of jet-setting Russian oligarchs and their British fixers, it turns into a more enigmatic exploration of male loneliness and the ethics of cannibalising other people’s stories ... You can detect the influence of Chekhov in Power’s economy of detail and control over mood. However, this tale of solitary male writers and their intrigues owes more to the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, whose influence saturates the novel .. The final 50 pages are so tense, I found myself both too stressed to go on and too stressed to stop, a total captive to the story.
Chris Power’s elegant first novel is a slyly ensnaring literary thriller written in immaculate prose ... an almost self-effacing commitment to unadorned clarity ... Power’s restraint pays off, making for a subtly immersive read, his sentences rippling like clear water even as the story’s murkier undertow pulls you out to sea. He doesn’t skimp on themes either, raising interesting questions about whether stories draw their power from reality or imagination, who (if anyone) owns them, and what privileges narrative control confers on the teller. Contemporary socio-political issues aside, A Lonely Man is a gripping and deftly controlled novel that proves Power is as good at writing books as he is at writing about them.
One way of experiencing all this could be disappointment: the book is patchy and the patches fail to completely cohere. But I found that faint incoherence compelling...Power keeps us guessing at the relationship between the rooms of his novel and denies us the relief of orientation ... Something about this elusiveness echoes the loneliness — and specifically male loneliness — that, per its title, runs throughout the novel ... finally solitary in the way of its male characters: apparently open and expressive but in fact spiky, suspicious, and self-involved. Did I ever really know it at all?
... an existential literary thriller in which writing itself is the lethal weapon. With the precision of Patricia Highsmith, Chris Power takes us into the world of John le Carré as seen through the autofiction of Rachel Cusk ... every sentence is packed with, well, power. Postmodern metafiction with an old-school plot, this is the slickest, smartest and most enjoyable novel I’ve read in years.
... thrilling ... Power has a canny eye for the uncanny ... Ambiguous networks of gazes allegorise the struggle for narrative mastery at the heart of A Lonely Man. (Power’s close third-person voice allowing Robert a semblance of control)
... an elegant, atmospheric story of shadows and half-truths ... At times his descriptions of dinner parties and school runs recall the domestic autofiction of Karl Ove Knausgaard. But Power is a very different kind of writer—and A Lonely Man soon reveals itself as a taut, subtle, postmodern literary thriller written with an exacting command over its form ... A Lonely Man delicately captures the melancholy of wintry Berlin, a familiar location from any number of Cold War spy novels and here serving as a stage set for Putin agents who may or may not be tailing Patrick. But just as it’s threatening to become a tale of jet-setting Russian oligarchs and their British fixers, it turns into a more enigmatic exploration of male loneliness and the ethics of cannibalising other people’s stories ... You can detect the influence of Chekhov in Power’s economy of detail and control over mood. However, this tale of solitary male writers and their intrigues owes more to the late Chilean author Roberto Bolaño, whose influence saturates the novel ... The final 50 pages are so tense, I found myself both too stressed to go on and too stressed to stop, a total captive to the story.
A Lonely Man never asks us to choose which lonely man is the loneliest, but clearly this is a book about masculine solipsism, and astute readers will already have gleaned that we have three candidates for the eponymous role. There’s also an interesting fourth ... There is some fine descriptive writing in Power’s novel ... there can be no doubt about it: Power (if not Prowe) has all the talent and skill he needs to write something great. But somehow this novel felt inhibited to me. There was a little too much hesitancy, circumspection, a debilitating self-consciousness. Sure, that’s partly the point; but the meta-meaning cannot be a justification for losing focus in the actual text ... More than once, I found myself urging Power to deploy his talent and just commit to one thing or another ... The Russian story felt occluded, stalled. Again, if that’s the point, it’s not a good enough point to detain so good a writer ... That said, the last scene of this book is superb, not least because the logic of Power’s plot has required a decision to be made to which he has to commit. My advice: buy the short stories and then buy this book and read them back-to-back.
... thrilling ... Power writes like the short-story specialist he is ... No detail is superfluous, no incident incidental. This makes reading his elegant plot even more of an adventure, each clue an invitation to second-guess the narrative ... Power is also playing with what his book is about: is it a thriller about a ghostwriter who fears for his life, or something deeper about the nature of stories and who owns them? Either way, it is a vodka shot of a read: down in one and savour the afterburn.
Patrick’s 'obliviousness' makes Robert 'feel charged with potency, as if he had the other man under his control.' Mr. Power allows him to dwell in that illusion for a long time, smoothly blending prosaic day-to-day events with Robert’s fictionalized renderings of Patrick’s disclosures. But gradually the 'le Carré stuff' Robert saw merely as material presses in from the edges, and a story that seemed slightly thin and diffuse abruptly consolidates for a killer payoff ending.
Power’s debut novel carries the weight of verisimilitude: of self-imposed deadlines that are invariably unmet, of the introspection required for fiction writing and the incompatibility of this with a busy domestic life. Each image is carefully selected and honed ... Power’s talent lies in the narrative blend of psychological struggle and wider international espionage: a skilful reflection on artistic creativity alongside 'this Le Carré stuff.' The book is self-consciously inspired by those traditional page-turners, with the postmodern twist of demonstrating how such stories can be constructed, decoded, borrowed from another life ... Like a fast-paced literary thriller, A Lonely Man is as much about the process of storytelling as about the plot itself ... The interweaving of Patrick’s investigations and Robert’s writing culminates in a gripping finale, but it’s the focus on Robert’s ruthlessness that emerges as the more interesting theme.
From the relationship between the two writers, Power develops a tense and unsettling narrative ... the reader can’t be sure how much derives from Robert’s imagination. Another layer of uncertainty comes from the small, strange things that start to happen in Robert’s life ... Power’s plain style, direct and precise, allows him to move easily between the different storylines while conveying a noirish moral ambiguity. The chapter set in London is a moving portrayal of bewilderment and grief ... A Lonely Man is a gripping novel that balances political intrigue with personal danger. It is also a melancholy portrayal of male solitude and community. Power gives us not just one lonely man but many, spread out across Europe and offering one another guarded, intermittent, and ultimately insufficient friendship.
... intriguing ... Power excels at capturing the small details and at nudging subtle shifts in relationships between his characters ... There is drama, but also humour ... This is a book freighted with moral choices, with the biggest saved till last. I loved it, even if at times I found myself wishing Power would cut loose a little and bust through the restrictions imposed by his own good taste.
Luckily for the reader, there is a lot more going on than first meets the eye. This is an intricate and elegant story, and cleverly metatextual. A Lonely Man is an exploration of the creative process, and the sacrifices that are made in real life in the pursuit of art ... Power’s style of plain, unshowy prose comes into its own. In loftier hands, the narrative of Patrick, a British ghostwriter drawn into the treacherous world of Russian oligarchs, might seem far-fetched. In A Lonely Man , this second story adds depth to Robert’s narrative, leading to interesting questions about ownership when it comes to telling stories ... The dialogue can feel stilted at times, particularly in the sections involving the Russians. There is not the same level of intimacy with these parts—in contrast, for example, to a brilliant set-piece that sees Robert travel to London after the suicide of his friend—and sustaining interest in the subplot will hinge on how much the reader cares about the machinations of Russian oligarchs and politicians ... Ultimately the book offers an original exploration of the creative process: writer as tortured artist, writer as thief, writer as predator. By the shrewd ending, Robert comes to realise what it means to jeopardise the real world and the people he loves. Beware, the book seems to say, of the dangers of prizing fiction above life itself.
A Lonely Man pose significant ethical questions: when does artistic borrowing cross over to become artistic theft, and what, if anything, do you owe to the person from whom you borrow? ... This balancing act is expertly handled; both styles are refreshed and made strange by their contact with the other. In perhaps the strongest section of the book, the Patrick narrative is temporarily shelved. Power unsettlingly resurfaces the theme of false memories, and the narratives we construct for ourselves from the truth.
A combination of political thriller, mystery, and meditation on artists’ responsibility to their subjects, this follow-up to Power’s story collection Mothers is a satisfying blend of thoughtfulness and suspense.
What Power does cleverly is make them part of the story’s rising suspense, stoking the tension and disconnect between Robert and Patrick and even inserting some novel within the novel as the narrative intermittently shifts into Robert’s fictional rendering of Patrick’s adventures with the oligarch. Power’s understated style abets the tension, creating gaps and unanswered questions that pull the reader along, recalling Hermione Lee’s description of Penelope Fitzgerald’s prose as 'plain, compact, and subtle,' leaving 'much unsaid.' An entertaining literary thriller that traces intrigue from the writer’s mind to the latest headlines.
In this beguiling literary thriller about the ethics of storytelling, Power examines the plundering tendencies of oligarchs and writers alike ... For a novel filled with so much trickery, there are some slack sections, for example, when Robert prepares his family’s summer house in Sweden or returns to London for a funeral. Furthermore, the bond between the two men isn’t quite magnetic enough for the reader to feel the sting of the eventual vampiric betrayal. By and large, though, Power maintains an elegant sense of intrigue around the lengths writers will go for a good story.
