One of A.D. Jameson's favorite books of 2009. "An anthology of achievements. . . . Tremendously artful and dirty fun." Full review here.
Rain Taxi:
"The voice is so assured, so meticulous in its construction, and evinces such original and brilliantly apropos metaphors, it's hard to believe this is Davies's first novel. . . . And if his literary debut is any indication, Davies is likely in coming years to join the ranks of those authors we read not for what happens next, but for what they're going to say next."
Bookslut:
". . . a new and supremely exciting node, one packed to the gills with not only several lifetimes, clearly rendered, but also with a profound sense of ultimate authorial control." [full review]
Seminary Co-op Bookstore:
"You’re unlikely to read a more stimulating meditation on truth, literature and movies this year." [full review]
Harry Mathews:
"Jeremy M. Davies has written a literally overwhelming book: the historical Rose Alley was the scene of Dryden’s brutal ambush by hirelings of the Earl of Rochester, and each chapter of Davies’s book appropriately ambushes the reader, not with brutality but with wit, irresistable ingenuity, and a stupefying narrative abundance that propels us from one sizzling and often hilarious surprise to the next. You have no excuse for not reading this book."
Steve Katz:
"Read this book. Jeremy Davies sets his 'tale' in 1968 Paris during the student riots. A film crew works on a movie of violent events that happened in the 18th century between poet laureate John Dryden and the erotic versifier, the Earl of Rochester. Each chapter treats one of the characters, so the book presents like a photogravure. Here’s the editor, director, actors, and etc. They are revealed as if a handsome bird shows us one tail feather at a time until the whole tail is told. The static qualities of the narration, persistently digressive, play against these explosive events and violent story. This disjunct creates a potent silence. The real action becomes the reader responding to Mr. Davies’s sentences. The delight is to slow down. He is an impeccable stylist who creates a richness full of Nabokovean Pynchonistics, totally original, dressed in wacky erudition."
Read a brief review by Thomas McGonigle here
And from Nicholas Birns here.
