Dartmouth Park: A Novel
By (Author) Rupert Thomson
Other Press LLC
Other Press LLC
23rd January 2024
United States
General
Fiction
823.914
Paperback
432
Width 133mm, Height 203mm
In this timely and explosive novel, an academic's seemingly mundane midlife crisis takes an alarming turn after his visit to a Greek monastery. It's February 2019. Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian with a German wife and a troubled nineteen-year-old son, is on his way back from a conference in Norway when he has an unexpected and disturbing experience that completely alters his view of the life that he has been living and the world that surrounds him. Believing that Ines, an attractive Spanish sociologist whom he met at the conference, can shed light on what he is feeling, he travels to Cadiz to see her. But his journey doesn't end there. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that he appears to find unbearable Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence or is he utterly self-deluded And if he is in denial about what he is doing, how far will he go to avoid facing the truth In this highly original and unsettling novel, one of the UK's most celebrated writers portrays an ordinary man in an extraordinary dilemma, a dilemma that will push him to the very edge of annihilation and disaster.
I devoured Dartmouth Park in asingle sitting. The sense of dislocationand locationmade it seem like a dream of another life, all of it so lyrical and yet narratively acute. A wonderful achievement. Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of The Feral Detective and Motherless Brooklyn
Praise for Barcelona Dreaming:
These numinous stories, where reality is just the launchpad for flights of extravagant, erotically charged fancy, recall much of Bolaos early workBarcelona Dreaming is a wonderful book, a phantasmal hymn to a city and a lost way of life.New York Times Book Review
The sense of place is brilliantly evokedand the stories build, cleverly linked together, into a beguiling love letter to the great city.Cond Nast Traveller
Rupert Thomson is the author of thirteen highly acclaimed novels, including Katherine Carlyle; Secrecy; The Insult, which was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize and selected by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time; The Book of Revelation, which was made into a feature film by Ana Kokkinos; and Death of a Murderer, which was short-listed for the Costa Novel of the Year Award. His memoir, This Party's Got to Stop, was named Writers' Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year. He lives in London.