Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Parks, Tim - Nicholas Fearn (review date 13 September 1999)

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Nicholas Fearn (review date 13 September 1999)

SOURCE: “Lost in Thought,” in New Statesman, September 13, 1999, pp. 53–54.

[In the following review, Fearn offers a favorable assessment of Destiny.]

The English like their great writers to entertain, and when a great writer's work falls short in this way, they demand that it at least be readily comprehensible. They also know by now where they can stick their preferences when they read a book by Tim Parks. In Destiny he has produced another novel that refuses to compromise, another that could certainly not be called an entertainment, although even in this regard it has its moments. Light reading it is not, and if one did not know better it would be easy to assume Parks was fulfilling his statutory obligation as a writer to offer at least one study in madness during his career. But this is how Parks always writes. He will only gain admirers with this latest effort.

The...

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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