Cedilla
Adam Mars-Jones
Cedilla
Cedilla continues the history of John Cromer (‘adventures’ sounds rather too hectic) begun by Pilcrow, described by the London Review of Books as ‘peculiar, original, utterly idiosyncratic’ and by the Sunday Times as ‘truly exhilarating’. These huge and sparkling books are particularly surprising coming from a writer of previously (let’s be tactful) modest productivity, who had seemed stubbornly attached to small forms. Now the alleged miniaturist has rumbled into the literary traffic in his monster truck, and seems determined to overtake Proust’s cork-lined limousine while it’s stopped at the lights. In Cedilla Cromer launches himself into the wider world of mainstream education...
4.3 out of 5 based on 5 reviews
|
Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardback |
| Pages |
752 |
| RRP |
£20.00 |
| Date of Publication |
January 2011 |
| ISBN |
978-0571245369 |
| Publisher |
Faber & Faber |
| |
Cedilla continues the history of John Cromer (‘adventures’ sounds rather too hectic) begun by Pilcrow, described by the London Review of Books as ‘peculiar, original, utterly idiosyncratic’ and by the Sunday Times as ‘truly exhilarating’. These huge and sparkling books are particularly surprising coming from a writer of previously (let’s be tactful) modest productivity, who had seemed stubbornly attached to small forms. Now the alleged miniaturist has rumbled into the literary traffic in his monster truck, and seems determined to overtake Proust’s cork-lined limousine while it’s stopped at the lights. In Cedilla Cromer launches himself into the wider world of mainstream education...
Reviews
The Daily Telegraph
Leo Robson
“There isn’t a passage here that doesn’t sparkle with some well-phrased perception, neatly overturned cliché or freshly minted pun. And while it can be draining to read a book of this size in which most sentences prompt you to smile, laugh or revise an opinion, you couldn’t exactly call this a weakness.”
14/01/2011
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The Sunday Telegraph
Mark Sanderson
“Cedilla – the centrepiece of what promises to be a magnificent triptych – ends with John ... facing an uncertain future. Has the punning prima donna got his comeuppance? It is a tribute to Mars-Jones’s style, wit and humour that the exhausted yet exhilarated reader can’t wait to find out.”
16/01/2011
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The Observer
Margaret Drabble
“Cedilla is even longer and stranger than its predecessor, Pilcrow, and it is just as unsettling, disarming, and compellingly readable. Adam Mars-Jones has created a narrative about disability that disables conventional critical vocabulary. It is a weird achievement, accomplished with panache, and forged in some region of the literary imagination that defies easy explanation.”
16/01/2011
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The Guardian
Alex Clark
“Structured in short sections that give a feeling of barely recordable incremental progress, it is best approached as an immersive reading experience, at times curiously blank and unengaging, at others lightning sharp. Packed with incidental detail, oddities and blind alleys, it tells you far more than you really need to know and can sometimes make you feel as though you've been buttonholed at a party by someone who's determined to tell you their life story. Fortunately, the buttonholer turns out to be one of the most original comic creations in recent fiction.”
15/01/2011
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The Literary Review
Keith Miller
“I wasn't wild about Pilcrow, though I was hugely impressed by it. Cedilla is, in one sense, simply more of the same: same character, same voice (sensuous but unsentimental and morbidly quip-heavy), same worm's eye view of the same not automatically enthralling subject matter, same triangulations between author, grown-up narrator and youthful protagonist. If I enjoyed Cedilla more it is perhaps because that triad is sturdier this time round.”
01/12/2010
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