Publishers Weekly
12/14/2015
Pears’s (An Instance of the Fingerpost) latest is a clever, well-constructed story. Living in an environmentally ravaged future governed by a technocratic so-called Scientific Government, the “psychomathematician” Angela Meerson builds a machine that could in theory access the resources of a parallel universe. However, the contraption turns out to be a good old-fashioned time machine that transports Meerson to pre-WWII Europe. Several decades later in 1960, she has built a new version of her machine in the cellar of the house of her lover, Henry Lytten, an Oxford literature scholar and intelligence agent who also dabbles in creative writing. Drawing heavily on the tropes of the Elizabethan pastoral and many other sources, Lytten has outlined a novel set in the fantasy realm of Anterworld. Anterworld is an oral culture whose priests are “Storytellers,” scholar-bards who roam the land and impart wisdom through sacred tales. Meerson uses Lytten’s sketchily conceived world to create a “latent” universe in her machine, a universe that gets activated, with unforeseen consequences, when a young girl named Rosie stumbles into the realm. Anterworld is meant to be derivative, borrowing from the long literary tradition of utopia and fantasy; this quality perhaps explains why although it gets the most attention of the novel’s three narratives, Anterworld is the least enchanting. Nonetheless, Pears excels at stage-managing the multiple sets as the actors leap from the dystopian future, to England in the grips of the Cold War, to whenever Anterworld could be said to exist, altering history as they go. A fun, immersive, genre-bending ride. 75,000-copy first printing. (Feb.)
From the Publisher
With Arcadia, Iain Pears has woven a delightful tapestry in the bold colors of complexity, wonder, and irony, even while offering the careful reader a chance to ferret out numerous literary allusions. Arcadia is filled with satisfying surprises up to the last sentence of its telling. Only a novelist with the knowledge and mental agility shown again and again by Iain Pears could give readers a gift as rich as Arcadia.”
—Dan Simmons, best-selling author of The Terror
“Arcadia is a gripping tale, with memorable characters who lead us through the plot’s twists and turns to the book’s deeply satisfying resolution. Iain Pears has long been one of my favorite authors, and Arcadia is another example of his masterful storytelling: deftly told, genre-defying, and a treat to read.”
—Deborah Harkness, best-selling author of A Discovery of Witches
“A fantastical extravaganza . . . A complex time-travelling, world-hopping caper with insistently epic stakes.”
—Steven Poole, The Guardian
“Pears’s prose is a pleasure to read . . . A dream of perfection in beautiful language . . . A compelling narrative; switching from one [storyline] to another means we are constantly in a state of suspense . . . I was entirely captured.”
—Marion Halligan, The Sydney Morning Herald
“A many-layered narrative in which real and imagined worlds continually collide . . . Aficionados of fantasy fiction will find plenty here to relish.”
—Max Davidson, The Mail on Sunday
“The most striking thing about Pears’s writing—his plots and ideas are complex, but his style is simple and clear. . . . Fantastic fun and, in spite of its complexity, a swift read.”
—Bryan Applebaum, The Sunday Times
“Not so much a novel as a cornucopia of narratives. . . . As a novelist, Iain Pears doesn’t repeat himself, and he gives with a generous hand.”
—Andrew Taylor, The Spectator
“Extremely clever but, better than that, immensely entertaining . . . Pears almost seamlessly merges genres of fantasy, sci-fi, spy thriller, romance, and more.”
—Jaine Blackman, The Oxford Times
Library Journal
★ 02/15/2016
This complex, entertaining tale from British novelist Pears (An Instance of the Fingerpost) involves time travel, British spies betraying one another, and apocalyptic scenarios all folded together in a number of interconnected story lines. Closest to our times is Henry Lytten, an old Oxford scholar, amateur author, and part-time spy for the British government. Unbeknownst to him, his friend Angela Meerson is really a psychomathematician who has invented a time machine of sorts and has traveled to Henry's time, roughly the 1960s, to escape betrayal and maybe death many years in the future. With her invention, she has created another universe called Anterwold, drawing on ideas from a novel Henry is writing. A young girl who lives near Henry and sometimes feeds his cat has accidentally stepped into this world and has started up the machinations of several plots and love affairs. Angela is being hunted on many fronts, in many parallel universes, and the powerful leader from her time is anxious to get his hands on her machine to use for his own ends. VERDICT Pears weaves a diverse group of characters and multiple worlds from the idyllic to the Orwellian to create an impressive and quite enjoyable mystery fantasy. [See Prepub Alert, 8/24/15.]—James Coan, SUNY at Oneonta Lib.
Kirkus Reviews
2015-11-17
Arcadia: a kind of heaven on Earth. Arcade: a place where games are played. Somewhere between the two lies this odd confection by the restless, genre-hopping Pears (Stone's Fall, 2009, etc.). It's the artist's pleasure to create. But what of the philosopher's? As Pears' latest opens, a younger Inkling—a member of the learned society to which C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien belonged, that is—is deep in a project with countless implications. "I want to construct a society that works," says Henry Lytten. "With beliefs, laws, superstitions, customs. With an economy and politics. An entire sociology of the fantastic." Alas, the 1960s will seem a golden age when that sociology takes shape. One of many possible futures, the world of the 23rd century, would do a robber baron proud. Bad corporatista Zoffany Oldmanter is determined to corner the market on everything; says our shadowy narrator, determined to thwart a hostile takeover, his priorities under the circumstances are to preserve his property and "prevent the entire universe being reshaped in the image of a bunch of thugs and reduced to ruin." Good luck, though if the future baddies seem to have a head start on time travel, Lytten has a lock on the fantastic, to say nothing of a pergola portal into a medieval-tinged time in which 11-year-old Jay, having determined that Lytten's assistant, Rosie, is not a fairy, blossoms into manhood after staring "a spirit in the eye without flinching" and otherwise proving that wispy bookworms are not without inner resources. Within those three broad swaths of time lie many alternate futures, and Pears darts from one to the other to the point that the reader who isn't confused isn't quite getting what he's up to. Suffice it to say that there's plenty of metacommentary on the art of storytelling, science fiction (ahem: "We say speculative fiction"), the destruction wrought by greed, and other weighty matters. A head-scratcher but an ambitious pleasure. When puzzled, press on: Pears' yarn is worth the effort.
