James Kidd
Give Us a Wave
I Am Radar is a self-aware, globetrotting post-postmodern novel that throws the kitchen sink at its reader. There is war and peace, art and science, love and hatred, librarianship and radio repair. There are characters eerily resembling Reif Larsen who turn out to be fictional but may just as easily be real. The parenthetical plot is suitably improbable but also desperate to convince. Coincidences, repetitions and strange meetings are verified by footnotes, a slippery bibliography and some nicely faded Sebaldian images. This is hysterical realism that tilts at magic but stops at card tricks.
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'Robert Silvers, editor of the New York Review of Books, once asked Isaiah Berlin who his ideal dinner guest would be. Without hesitation Berlin exclaimed, ‘William James!’'
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Hilary Mantel reviewing Margaret Atwood: a #BookerPrize double-header from the archive.
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