- Published: 1 December 2010
- ISBN: 9781409059189
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 320
Last Resort
- Published: 1 December 2010
- ISBN: 9781409059189
- Imprint: Vintage Digital
- Format: EBook
- Pages: 320
Cleaver ranks with the finest of Parks's club-class malcontents. An ogre with charisma he compels as much as he repels.... this novel should be required reading for all who preach from a media pulpit. It shows the hunter hunted, the exposer exposed. And it inspires - as only fiction could - sympathy for the old devil
Boyd Tonkin, Independent
A highly stimulating novel...As a critic, Cleaver would approve of his creator
Oscar Turner, Observer
One can only admire the intelligence and skill with which Parks interleaves the disparate worlds of Chelsea and Sudtirol...I have now read Cleaver three times, and each has let me with greater respect for Park's abilities
James Hamilton-Paterson, Guardian
Parks writes tragedy well and reveals Cleaver's piteous state, raw from loss and unable to mourn.....[Cleaver] is difficult to like and easy to judge, but he draws you into his world and convinces you to stay
Katie Gould, Scotland on Sunday
Scintillating and subtly nuanced narrative. The secret of its success? Masterful prose, just free-form enough to imitate the whirligig of thought. Parks deserves to take a bow
Alastair Sooke, New Statesman
The book is written in plain, terse, highly effective prose, with Cleaver's thoughts coming at the reader pell-mell. Parks maintains a firm grip on this stream of consciousness, so that the narrative imitates the impatient, darting, obsessive quality of Cleaver's mind but never descends to incoherence
Peter Parker, Sunday Times
Tim Parks is one of Britain's most underrated authors...His latest book, Cleaver, is a dense, intriguing novel, prickly and strange...The novel's portrait of a disintegrating mind is skilful, a fine anatomy of a psyche that flickers between ordinary neuroses and megalomania, and it offers a pungent critique of the middle-class media and their obsessions. Alongside this ruthless acuity, there is as well a certain human warmth
Henry Hitchings, Financial Times
Yet again, Parks has anatomised the complexities of the heart with a skill which few of his contemporaries can match
David Robson, Daily Telegraph