Stephen Cox

Megacity Slickers

Feast Days

By

Fourth Estate 227pp £12.99 order from our bookshop

At one point in Feast Days, Ian MacKenzie’s impressive second novel, Emma, the narrator, goes to an exhibition at a converted hospital in São Paulo. On one wall, the words Havia mais futuro no passado (‘there was more future in the past’) are written – in Helvetica, as she can’t resist pointing out. This could be taken as a swipe at the complacency and cynicism of the Brazilian elite, a subtle nod to the unfulfilled potential of a country Stefan Zweig once called the ‘land of the future’, or, indeed, confirmation of Emma’s own feeling of stasis. Hints such as these are typical of the arch narration and vision of Feast Days. The book is peppered with dry, thought-provoking observations and asides that amuse and probe without ever slipping into moralism or preachiness.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • 'Picturesque scenery, hard work in uncomfortable surroundings, eccentric locals, the yearly round: all the ingredie… ,
    • Tarantino's latest film is 'a fairy tale about Hollywood, where fantasy is an industrial product and the boulevards… ,
    • 'I don’t think we’re here on Earth to be Happy. I think we’re here on Earth to help God. I am a messianic writer'.… ,
    • 'Darley’s book is not a mad dash through this most compelling and complex of English counties. Nor is it another ti… ,
    • 'Moser’s book offers such a gripping account of a profoundly damaged human being, trapped in a cycle of repetition,… ,
    • 'Ideas that I’d thought were set down in full continue to smoulder ... this book is only a snapshot of some larger… ,
    • 'Full of invention which, at its most pedestrian, is eminently Victorian, and at its most unrestrained wildly imagi… ,
    Follow Us