All Quiet on the Orient Express - Hardcover

Mills, Magnus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1559704950 ISBN 13: 9781559704953

Publisher: Arcade Publishing, 1999

Synopsis

Camping out in England's Lake District waiting for summer to end, an itinerant odd-jobber agrees to do a small painting job for the owner of the campsite, which leads to further tasks that enmesh him against his will in the complex mysteries of the placid local community. By the author of The Restraint of Beasts. 25,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

Magnus Mills may have single-handedly invented a new fictional genre: the Kafkaesque novel of work. First, his Booker-shortlisted The Restraint of Beasts brought to fence building the kind of black humour found in a Coen brothers movie. Now, in All Quiet on the Orient Express, Mills turns his deadpan prose on some very odd jobs indeed. The unnamed narrator is on holiday for a few weeks, camping in the Lake District before beginning an extended journey to India. He sees no reason not to agree when the campground owner--the sinister Tommy Parker, who seems mainly to engage in "buying and selling"--asks him to help out with a simple chore. As this is a Magnus Mills novel, however, no chore can possibly be simple. Through error or bad luck, one task leads to another and the narrator quickly finds himself trapped by his own passivity and a very English reluctance to cause a fuss. Soon he's doing homework for Parker's daughter, being kicked on and off the darts team at the local pub and learning how to perform a series of menial jobs. ("Have you ever operated a circular saw?" "Driven a tractor before?" "What are you like with a hammer and nails?")

There's a lot that's strange about this little town. Where have all the females gone? Why does everyone seem to think he should take over the town milk route? Why won't the shops stock his beloved baked beans? Both the grocer and the pub are oddly eager to let him run up tabs and there's no sign of payment from Tommy Parker. It seems, in fact, that the narrator's early suspicions have been fulfilled: "I'd inadvertently become his servant." Like the Hall brothers from The Restraint of Beasts, Parker is volatile, irrational and all-powerful--a primitive god ruling over his own creation. As the narrator falls further and further under his sway, All Quiet on the Orient Express becomes a striking allegory of labour and capital, purgatory and judgement, and the uncanniness of manual work. --Mary Park

Review:

John Maingay "New York Newsday" Leisured aesthetes do not have a monopoly on literary talent, as Mills clearly has it by the shovelful....Addictive, understated...[Mills] has a batlike sensitivity to the power games that underlie everyday conversation.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arcade Publishing
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 1559704950
• ISBN 13: 9781559704953
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 211