Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Parks, Tim - Michael J. Carroll (review date 24 January 1988)

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Michael J. Carroll (review date 24 January 1988)

SOURCE: “The Love-Death of a Typesetter,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 24, 1988, p. 3.

[In the following review, Carroll offers a favorable assessment of Loving Roger.]

“Roger lay on my new blue rug in the corner by the television and the lamp that seemed like it always had the funny orange bubbles rising in it that he hated. But I went to work just as usual.”

Thus begins Loving Roger: Anna at work; Roger lying dead back in her bed-sitter. Anna will do no work today; she will tell us of her affair with Roger, her lover of two years, the father of her child.

In telling this story of love to the death, British author Tim Parks sets himself a number of obstacles: The climax is revealed in the first few pages. The narrator is a vacuous 20-year-old secretary whose thoughts and expressions derive from television and romantic fiction. The narrator does not...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Jo-Ann Goodwin (review date 17 October 1986)
   2. Michael J. Carroll (review date 24 January 1988)
   3. David Teagle (review date Summer 1988)
   4. Richard Eder (review date 16 October 1988)
   5. Peter Reading (review date 26 May–1 June 1989)
   6. Nicholas Clee (review date 30 August 1991)
   7. Tim Parks with Michele Field (interview date 6 July 1992)
   8. Christopher Bray (review date 4 September 1993)
   9. Nicholas Wroe (review date 10 September 1993)
   10. Frank Kermode (review date 4 November 1993)
   11. Jonathan Yardley (review date 10 July 1994)
   12. Jonathan Keates (review date 27 January 1995)
   13. Albert Read (review date 28 January 1995)
   14. Christopher Merrill (review date 24 March 1996)
   15. Nicholas Wroe (review date 19 July 1996)
   16. Keith Miller (review date 11 April 1997)
   17. Penelope Lively (review date 12 April 1997)
   18. John Derbyshire (review date 20 September 1998)
   19. Gabriele Annan (review date 5 November 1998)
   20. George Walden (review date 11 December 1998)
   21. Antony Rouse (review date 2 January 1999)
   22. Anita Brookner (review date 28 August 1999)
   23. Nicholas Fearn (review date 13 September 1999)
   24. Jenny Turner (review date 30 September 1999)
   25. D. J. Enright (review date 10 August 2000)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright