Toby Lichtig
Search for Serenity
Racked with pelvic pain and ‘losing interest in intimacy’, Tim Parks was at a loss. Even his characters were becoming ‘manic and withdrawn’. Failed relationships dominated Rapids (2005), and Cleaver (2006) featured a metaphysically challenged journalist holed up in a Tyrolean mountain lodge. Parks subsequently sought relief, for himself and his characters, in Buddhist meditation. Much to his surprise, it had a powerful effect. He described this in his memoir Teach Us to Sit Still (2010), and now a novel has evolved from the experience.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'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!’'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/the-pragmatists-progress
'She digs her images into her story, so that they blow up like psychic land mines when the reader’s perception brushes against them.'
Hilary Mantel reviewing Margaret Atwood: a #BookerPrize double-header from the archive.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-realist-with-wings
In Ali Smith's "Summer", 'the coronavirus pandemic has arrived. Lockdown happens too. There are allusions to Black Lives Matter, to online abuse and radicalisation, to things so recently news that it feels shocking to find them in a novel.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/seasons-heatings