Arcadia (Pears) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Every so often you read a novel to which the best critical response is simply "Wow!," followed by a sigh of pleasure. Eighteen years ago I felt this way about Iain Pears’s intricate historical mystery An Instance of the Fingerpost. The book dazzled for many of the usual reasons—fascinating characters, a richly presented fictive world, polished writing, lively dialogue, a serious engagement with ideas about life and morality—but, more unusually, it was also a masterpiece of plot construction. All this is again true, and then some, of Mr. Pears’s Arcadia.
Michael Dirda - Wall Street Journal
 

[Pears] is a master at creating structurally intricate novels.... As Pears steadily builds his multiplicity of stories, his orchestrations become something far more ambitious, a calculated and at times quite droll assault on the very nature of narrative itself.
Steve Donoghue - Washington Post
 

A complex romp through time and genres...that intertwines 10 major characters over several centuries, with allusions abounding to Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Shakespeare, and a raft of others.... [It’s] fun to puzzle out how all the strands fit together.
Patricia Hagen - Minneapolis Star Tribune


A fantastical extravaganza.... A complex time-travelling, world-hopping caper with insistently epic stakes.
Steven Poole - Guardian (UK)
 

Pears’s prose is a pleasure to read.... A dream of perfection in beautiful language.... A compelling narrative; switching from one [storyline] to another means we are constantly in a state of suspense.... I was entirely captured.
Marion Halligan - Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
 

A many-layered narrative in which real and imagined worlds continually collide.... Aficionados of fantasy fiction will find plenty here to relish.
Max Davidson - Mail on Sunday (UK)


The most striking thing about Pears’s writing—his plots and ideas are complex, but his style is simple and clear.... Fantastic fun and, in spite of its complexity, a swift read.
Bryan Applebaum - Sunday Times (UK)
 

Not so much a novel as a cornucopia of narratives.... As a novelist, Iain Pears doesn’t repeat himself, and he gives with a generous hand.
Andrew Taylor - Spectator (UK)
 

Extremely clever but, better than that, immensely entertaining.... Pears almost seamlessly merges genres of fantasy, sci-fi, spy thriller, romance, and more.
Jaine Blackman - Oxford Times (UK)


[A] clever, well-constructed story. Living in an environmentally ravaged future governed by a technocratic so-called Scientific Government, the "psychomathematician" Angela Meerson builds a machine that could in theory access the resources of a parallel universe.... A fun, immersive, genre-bending ride.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) This complex, entertaining tale...involves time travel, British spies betraying one another, and apocalyptic scenarios.... [A] diverse group of characters and multiple worlds...[creates] an impressive and quite enjoyable mystery fantasy. —James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Library Journal


Pears darts from one [alternate future] to the other...[with] plenty of metacommentary on the art of storytelling, science fiction...the destruction wrought by greed, and other weighty matters. A head-scratcher but an ambitious pleasure. When puzzled, press on: Pears' yarn is worth the effort.
Kirkus Reviews