The House of Rumour
Jake Arnott
The House of Rumour
Larry Zagorski spins wild tales of fantasy worlds for pulp magazines. But as the Second World War hangs in the balance, the lines between imagination and reality are starting to blur. In London, spymasters enlist occultists in the war of propaganda. In Southern California, a charismatic rocket scientist summons dark forces and an SF writer founds a new religion. In Munich, Nazis consult astrologists as they plot peace with the West and dominion over the East. And a conspiracy is born that will ripple through the decades to come. The truth, it seems, is stranger than anything Larry could invent. But when he looks back on the 20th century, the past is as uncertain as the future. Just where does truth end and illusion begin?
4.2 out of 5 based on 6 reviews
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Omniscore:
|
| Classification |
Fiction |
| Genre |
General Fiction |
| Format |
Hardcover |
| Pages |
416 |
| RRP |
|
| Date of Publication |
July 2012 |
| ISBN |
978-0340922729 |
| Publisher |
Sceptre |
| |
Larry Zagorski spins wild tales of fantasy worlds for pulp magazines. But as the Second World War hangs in the balance, the lines between imagination and reality are starting to blur. In London, spymasters enlist occultists in the war of propaganda. In Southern California, a charismatic rocket scientist summons dark forces and an SF writer founds a new religion. In Munich, Nazis consult astrologists as they plot peace with the West and dominion over the East. And a conspiracy is born that will ripple through the decades to come. The truth, it seems, is stranger than anything Larry could invent. But when he looks back on the 20th century, the past is as uncertain as the future. Just where does truth end and illusion begin?
The Devil's Paintbrush by Jake Arnott
Reviews
The Independent on Sunday
James Kidd
“The House of Rumour is both a bold departure from Arnott's classic gangster novels, and an extension of their excavations of buried history. Here, his canvas is broader, his method more assured. Touching on many grand narratives of the past 70 years, Arnott offers a brightly coloured portrait of our times that is alternately intimate and epic. He takes detailed snapshots of Fleming arguing with his wife in Jamaica, only to zoom out across space on the Voyager 1 to remind us that Earth is simply a minuscule dot in a minuscule solar system. The House of Rumour is a brilliant achievement that invites repeated readings.”
08/07/2012
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The Independent
Roz Kaveney
“The world of intelligence, the world of creativity, the world of the occult – all these dance round each other flirtatiously. We never quite know for sure who is using and who is being used. This kaleidoscope of narrative fragments sometimes looks like a pattern and sometimes like gaudy chaos, but always glitters. Arnott is not just a cynical games player fascinated by the possibilities of structure and thought experiments. He has the capacity to make us care about humanity, even of a monster like Hess. Whatever he touches on feels right, whether he has made it up or looked it up; this is a supremely intelligent book as well as a surprisingly warm one.”
30/06/2012
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The Guardian
Mark Lawson
“ A conspiracy thriller filled with bewildering connections, dark conjecture and arcane information, The House of Rumour perhaps most resembles The Da Vinci Code, rewritten by an author with the gifts of characterisation, wit and literacy. It may be the ideal holiday read for those who like to take their brains with them on vacation.”
29/06/2012
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The Financial Times
James Lovegrove
“Arnott made his name with crime novels such as The Long Firm and He Kills Coppers but they were as much about deception and double lives as they were about crooks and thieves. His interest in those ideas here reaches a peak in a work that is meticulously researched, full of skilful literary ventriloquism and the occasional pastiche (the Fleming section, for example, deftly parodies that author’s pragmatic prose style).”
20/07/2012
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The Observer
Andrew Anthony
“The book could almost work as a compendious excuse to exhume neglected figures from the past, because Arnott assembles a fascinating cast of misfits who have been consigned to the margins of history. There is Jack Parsons, the rocket scientist and Crowley devotee who set up a hedonistic commune in California in the 1940s, before accidentally blowing himself up. And Katharine Burdekin, the British feminist who in 1937 wrote Swastika Night, a work of visionary dystopia that has been compared to Nineteen Eighty-Four. But this novel is more than a collection of obscure biographies; it's also about timing and dislocation, and how life and history rest on what sci-fi readers may know as a "Jonbar Hinge", a point at which the future could have taken a different path.”
22/07/2012
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The Sunday Times
Phil Baker
“Was Crowley really involved in something called Operation Mistletoe, luring Hess to Britain? In fact, he wasn’t, but Arnott hasn’t needed to invent Mistletoe; it is a story that already does the rounds among occultists. Equally picturesque rumours in Arnott’s brilliantly murky book turn out to be true. Did America push abstract art into Europe as part of its cold-war strategy? Yes. Did L Ron Hubbard, the inventor of Scientology, take ideas from Crowleyite occultism via Parsons? Yes. Have intelligence agencies encouraged UFO stories as a cover-up for secret aviation projects? Yes. And was there a loopy Trotskyite sect called the Posadists who believed in permanent revolution on other planets? Yes again.”
29/07/2012
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