Tom Williams
What’s in a Name?
In William Thacker’s second novel, Lingua Franca, the narrator, Miles Platting, awakes from a shipwreck, buried under rubble. He is rescued and transported to a hospital, where everyone communicates in silence, through handwritten notes and sign language. When he asks for the whereabouts of his wife, Kendal, he is handed a pen and told to write down everything he remembers, and so he reveals how he reached this unlikely point.
Miles is the founder of a naming rights agency, Lingua Franca, which enables towns across the UK to be renamed after corporate sponsors. Thus Milton Keynes has become Stella Artois and Southampton is Wagamama. Lingua Franca claims that sponsorship will reduce a town’s debt burden, attract investment and lower taxes.
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
'A publicist interviewed by Fairrie praises Collins and her heroines ... because these were "women who behaved like men". Is that supposed to be good, given how men behaved towards Collins?'
Peter Conrad reviews a new documentary about Jackie Collins.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/easy-writer
'Walk down your supermarket pet food aisle and you’ll be hard pressed to find a single brand that claims to be made with high-welfare meat. More expensive pet food should not be about spoiling our cats but about sparing the farmed beasts we feed them.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/meattoo
'Two things prevent [this book] from collapsing under the weight of its own wayward ambition. Colin Jones, one of the finest living scholars of early modern France, is no ordinary historian. And the day in question, 27 July 1794, was no ordinary day'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/night-of-the-guillotine