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

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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