- Published: 15 August 2010
- ISBN: 9780099539834
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 336
- RRP: $19.99
The Escape
- Published: 15 August 2010
- ISBN: 9780099539834
- Imprint: Vintage
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 336
- RRP: $19.99
A novel where the humour is melancholic, the melancholy mischievous and the talent startling
Milan Kundera
Witty and engaging, erudite but fleet and sinuous; the questions he asks are lightly posed, his mock grandeur dispersing in a sea of ridiculous incident and comic undercutting. In this playful, eloquent novel, Adam Thirlwell demonstrates that knowing why one acts as one does is rarely the whole answer, or much more than the beginning of a question
Alex Clark, Times Literary Supplement
Beautifully written, poignant and clever... Thirlwell has a genuinely unique insight into humankind
The Times
The narrative develops a sense of authenticity that is persuasive enough not to be disturbed, even by the inevitable adventurous sex scene
Jane Shilling, Sunday Telegraph
The Escape is an utterly glorious piece of work...Thirlwell has with this superb book also staked a rightful claim as a literary phenomenon
The Lady
The Escape is one of the best British novels I've read this year for one reason; Thirlwell's prose. At once effervescent and elegant, his narrative voice lifts the novel's lecherous comedy beyond the sublunary lovers' antics into a more rarefied sphere
Sarah Churchwell, Guardian
In The Escape, you can practically see Bellow's Augie March, Roth's Mickey Sabbath and Martin Amis's John Self applauding, ghost-like, from the margins... The novel fizzes with intelligence, verbal skill and humour
Simon Baker, Observer
Thirwell's novel elegantly portrays the ageing Haffner's thrilling attempts to escape from lovers, the mafia, his family and himself
Daily Telegraph
The writing is polished and full of allusions
Brandon Robshaw, Independent on Sunday
A witty, irreverant and elegaic new novel...Haffner is a Quixote of our time
New York Times Book Review
A wittily observant young author... Audacious
Joyce Carol Oates, New York Review of Books