All Quiet on the Orient Express: A 'hilariously surreal' novel from the Booker Prize-shortlisted author - Softcover

Mills, Magnus

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408813769 ISBN 13: 9781408813768

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2011

Synopsis

It is the end of the summer. The tourists have already gone, and now the sun is abandoning the Lake District's damp valleys. Only a lone camper remains, enjoying the quiet. He plans to stay just long enough to prepare for a trip to the East. But then the owner of the campsite asks him to paint a fence and he innocently obliges. Soon other odd jobs pile up until little by little he becomes ensnared in the ominous 'out-of-season'.

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:

'Understatedly surreal, deadpan gothic, Mills is a master of the uncanny ... Such a fresh fictional voice' (Esquire)

'Mills is a master of the cliffhanger and can make even the most deadpan behaviour compelling and funny... A deliciously sly comic fable' (Financial Times)

'Absorbing, darkly worrying and very, very funny' (The Times)

'Mill's great strength is in mixing quiet amusing amusements with a deeper feeling of malice' (Guardian)

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1408813769
• ISBN 13: 9781408813768
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320