Old myths are broken, and a new voyage begins -- the major new novel from one of our most imaginative storytellers is about to set sail...
Mark Haddon is one of our most imaginative storytellers, whose work has been read and enjoyed by millions. In his most recent book, The Pier Falls ('Superbly gripping', Sunday Times), he reworked two mythical legends - Ariadne on Naxos and Gawain and the Green Knight - and turned them into startling contemporary stories. In The Porpoise he takes on the epic tale of Pericles, Prince of Tyre, to stunning dramatic effect.
Wondrous... a violent, all-action thrill ride shuttling between
antiquity and the present... just downright brilliant... a
transcendant, transporting experience... A helix, a mirror ball, a
literary box of tricks… take your pick: this is a full-spectrum
pleasure, mixing metafictional razzmatazz with pulse-racing action
and a prose style to die for. I’ll be staggered if it’s not spoken
of whenever prizes are mentioned this year
*Observer*
A beautifully rendered retelling…[and] a gripping novel that,
despite its rollicking plot, never feels relentless, and is often
very affecting indeed
*Financial Times*
The extraordinary force and vividness of Haddon's prose ensure that
The Porpoise reads [...] as a continually unfolding demonstration
of the transporting power of stories... This is language that knows
how to do things: sail a ship, make a gold buckle, negotiate the
tides of the Thames. It's a stunningly effective combination of the
quotidian and the mythic that pins impossibility to the page
*Guardian*
Compelling, satisfying and moving... Haddon's writing is exquisite,
balancing simple storytelling with searing insight
*Metro*
The Porpoise is terrifically violent, with a bright, innocent
ferocity … Haddon wants to restore agency to the female characters
sidelined by the Antiochus legend. This could feel like a
condescending attempt to end up on the right of history, but
doesn’t
*The New Yorker*
Told in Haddon’s generously telegraphic prose – onparticularly good
form here – [...] The Porpoise is a defiantly odd novel, dependent
on the fine caul of Haddon’s prose to keep together the heavily
spiced romantic mixture within… Haunted not just by its direct
source but by Ovid and others, the novel exists in a world of old
magic, of stories within stories, and webs of allusion that would
crumble swiftly if mishandled, but which, here, weave their spell
marvellously well
*Daily Telegraph*
[The Porpoise] races across the oceans: it is a book of thrilling,
salt-caked adventures that scintillate like sunlight on the surface
of the sea. There are plagues and famines and sword fights with
not-quite human adversaries. There are desperate escapes and
terrible family separations and dramatic recognitions. It is a
breathless, delightful, utterly absorbing read
*The Guardian*
The Porpoise by Mark Haddon is the book I’ve recommended the most
this year because it’s the one I had the most fun with. It kept
shifting as I read it, changing from action to romance to
science-fiction. It’s dizzying
*Observer, *Books of the Year**
Beguiling...ambitious...bold... Haddon's prose is beautiful, and he
is utterly in command of his slippery material... An elegant homage
to stories' capacity for endless renewal
*Evening Standard*
Beautifully written
*The Times*
Daring... extraordinary... Haddon’s writing is beautiful, almost
hallucinatory at times, and his descriptions so rich and lush and
specific that smells and sights and tastes and sounds — foam
smashing across a boat’s deck; a breakfast of olives and barley
bread soaked in wine; a woman trapped alive in a coffin — all but
waft and dance off the page... The Porpoise is a provocative and
deeply interesting work
*New York Times*
[A] multi-layered, ambitious novel… [with] an immersive, intricate
narrative… Elegant, inventive and thought-provoking
*Mail on Sunday*
Mark Haddon has written a terrifically exciting novel called The
Porpoise … so riveting that I found myself constantly pining to
fall back into its labyrinth of swashbuckling adventure and
feminist resistance
*The Washington Post*
The Porpoise is lovely, sad, ambitious and admirable... Every age
retells, refocuses and interprets the classics. In The Porpoise
Mark Haddon has done so in a way that makes us look afresh not only
at the story of Pericles but also at storytelling itself
*Literary Review*
An enthralling novel that will sweep you up from the off
*Woman & Home*
Seriously good... a beautiful read you won't forget
*Evening Standard *Summer Reads**
Haddon’s glittering tapestry of a novel skilfully redeploys the
structures of Pericles’ source material… In The Porpoise, Haddon
gives voice to a character who, in Shakespeare, receives no more
than a passing mention, and in doing so, shows the transcendent
power of stories to heal and restore
*Independent*
Staggeringly ambitious, innovative, beautifully written... The
Porpoise has the pace of a really good thriller, but combined with
a subtlety and depth that few thrillers possess
*Pat Barker*
A full-throttle blast of storytelling mastery. I read it on the
plane in a single sitting at 30,000 feet and enjoyed every second.
Gorgeously written and very clever, but also such fun! Ancient and
modern overlap and tangle in exhilarating ways, it’s like romping
through a Literary Netflix: an episode of something historical and
bloody, then something slick and contemporary, then something
really weird and unnerving. So many pleasures in one book. The
Porpoise is a joy to read
*Max Porter*
There is storytelling of such primacy in Mark Haddon’s The
Porpoise, that when I turned the last page, I was left completely
elated. A gorgeous, enlivening experience. It is also one that
insistently asks: how? How did all this add up to something so
sublime? How, with all its subtle slips, and stunningly weird
passages, could this strange, beautiful book feel so finely
composed? It is disarmingly wild. And the story itself, in which
the myth of Appolonius, remixed as Pericles by Shakespeare and
George Wilkins, is again turned inside out, thrown backward and
forward, and hurled against oceans (in an act of imaginative
heroism by the author), invites us to understand something Haddon
always has, which is that even stories as old as this one can
remain relevant to our current moment. Especially if they are told
with this much originality and conviction
*Goldsmiths Prize*
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