'(A) tough old-fashioned bildungsroman that meanders more than it moves, with its creator’s customary herks, jerks, digressions and Rabelaisian excesses.I’m afraid the book is also very poorly edited - if at all.' - Edward Docx, The Guardian His vocabulary lacks invention and his word selection is staunchly unremarkable. He has little of Dickens’s sophisticated and multivalent command of register, and only a fraction of his psychological dexterity. (.) Irving has been compared to Dickens, but on the evidence of this novel that is far-fetched. (.) It would be overstating the case to say that Irving is merely gestural in this book, but it’s as though he brilliantly imagines scenes and characters and then omits to give the latter much interesting or plausible interiority - like writing a screenplay and relying on a director or actors to bring the depth. He consistently avoids the cliches of setup and setting and deftly draws you in as a witness to the outlandish. (.) The best of the novel comes in Irving’s unusual scene writing, and this remains his great imaginative strength. 'This novel is not for those without readerly stamina.General information | review summaries | our review | links | about the authorī- : a heap of a novel, with just too much piled in and on

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