If we didn’t already know that Milan Kundera is one of Craig Raine’s literary heroes, then it wouldn’t be too hard to work it out from his first novel.
If we didn’t already know that Milan Kundera is one of Craig Raine’s literary heroes, then it wouldn’t be too hard to work it out from his first novel. As in Kundera’s later fiction (Immortality, Slowness, Identity, Ignorance), there’s the stark one-word title laying out the theme to be interrogated. There’s the same relentless erudition — so that even Raine’s two-page thematic scene-setter finds room for Dickens, Beckett, Auden and Henry James. More obviously still, there’s the same mix of straight narrative with essay-writing, fragments of autobiography and much learned editorialising about what the characters are up to.
But, as it turns out, you need more than just all this to match Kundera.
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