It’s a stirring proposition but there are doubts about Peace’s handling from the start ... His afterword defies anyone to read the novel and still use Munich as a slur, which seems to misunderstand his likely audience.
Relentless, electrifying, harrowing ... The novel’s modus operandi is also one of juxtaposition, of a kind in which voices and scenes appear to melt into one another, marked by tonal shifts ... What elevates Munichs above a recitation of an event so repeatedly discussed and memorialised that it has acquired a near-mythological status is Peace’s dogged devotion to particularity.
As the novel continues to alternate between Manchester and Munich, it’s clear that there will be a huge number of characters to keep track of — but also that the new reader-friendly Peace will help us to do so, while supplying all of them with backstories of enormous richness and depth ... The combination of heart, sheer scale and — let’s face it — a sense of relief that Peace has forsaken cussedness for epic narrative sweep adds up to an irresistibly stirring read.
Indelible ... If you have read Peace before you will recognise these long sentences, and repetition which he uses throughout Munichs to conjure a mood of sadness and dread as well as channel the demotic of his characters’ world ... For days after I reached this haunting novel’s devastating last sentence, I was googling its characters because I felt desperate to see their faces, such was the emotional connection I forged with their story. It is at times a claustrophobic place to be but I did not want to leave.
Peace clearly understands his role and responsibility as a serious chronicler of 20th-century social history. Munichs is unlikely to have much impact on those people who like to mock what happened in Munich, but it’s a fitting tribute to those who were there.
Deeply moving ... Bringing his large cast of characters—the players, their families, the air crew, the investigators, and the hospital staff—to vivid life, Peace captures all the conflicting emotions of people trying to rally in the wake of a senseless tragedy. Readers should pounce.
