Three Brothers (Ackroyd) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Three Brothers is an alternative autobiography, a ghost story and a murder mystery all in one slim volume. Dickens, Blake, and Eliot—all subjects of lives by Ackroyd—cast shadows over the three-ply narrative that is full of chance and coincidence, 'alliances and affinities,' 'contenders and young pretenders,' shape-shifters and shirt-lifters ... The waspish vignettes of literary London and fusty academe are a delight. The air is full of poison—and echoes of other Ackroyd novels. He sees the capital as 'a web so taut and tightly drawn' that the slightest movement sets off a chain of events ... The brilliant result is the quintessence of Ackroyd.
Telegraph (UK)


Three Brothers [is] a London novel which is permeated by Dickens ... The themes—lost childhoods and crime—are Dickensian, and the novel is suffused with the author’s awareness of the strangeness and often loneliness of the bleak streets of London. There is melodrama and comedy, and this too is Dickensian ... A book full of rich and sudden moments of delight.
Scotsman (UK)


London is a major character in the novel. In Ackroyd's accomplished hands the city becomes a mystical place, where visions abound. Highly recommended.
Daily Mail (UK)


Three Brothers, an amalgam of social satire and noirish thriller, is vintage Ackroyd."
Financial Times (UK)
 

[A] characteristically sly novel juxtaposing the mundane and the mystical in 1960s London. [A] trio of brothers...take radically different paths in life...[and] embody different aspects of Ackroyd’s own biography—a segmentation that contributes to their oddly impersonal feel. In contrast, the author’s beloved London [is] triumphantly alive...coincidence is everywhere, anything is possible.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) With overtones of Greek tragedy and Charles Dickens, this is a literary and engrossing parable and a loving tribute to London in all its depravity.
Library Journal


[An] intriguing if inconsistent latest...stew of family saga, murder mystery, political conspiracy and tableau of London's history.... Ackroyd's short novel maintains a patchy course.... At times humdrum and perfunctory, at others fantastical, this genre-spanning novel offers lightweight bookish entertainment.
Kirkus Reviews