SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2015 A down to earth and surreal fable from one of Britain’s most original and best-loved comic novelists
Magnus Mills is the author of A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In and six other novels, including The Restraint of Beasts, which won the McKitterick Prize and was shortlisted for both the Booker Prize and the Whitbread (now the Costa) First Novel Award in 1999. His most recent novel, A Cruel Bird Came to the Nest and Looked In, was published to great critical acclaim. His books have been translated into twenty languages. He lives in London.
Another mythic, mercurial world, a utopia that increasingly reveals
its own fragility … Fans will revel in his bone-dry comic prose, a
narrative voice that is both casual and knowing. In one patch of
grass, Mills triumphantly displays his own idiosyncrasies and
peculiarities; as literary experiments go, it’s a memorable one
*Literary Review*
Magnus Mills’s work is always charming, timeless and slightly at a
tangent to reality, making us view our own world through fresh
eyes. This short, slight novel is, in essence, a parable about our
fall from Eden and man’s essential biddability
*Daily Mail*
Very funny … One of the distinguishing features of Mills’s prose is
the way it flirts with whimsy without ever succumbing to it. Like
all the great comic stylists – which Mills certainly is – the books
are often pretexts for exercises in ‘pure word music’, a phrase
coined by Douglas Adams to describe the joy of reading Wodehouse …
The Field of the Cloth of Gold is another joyful performance of
‘pure word music’ from one of Britain’s most original, inimitable
writers
*Spectator*
We’ve come to recognise what is distinctively Millsian: a plot that
is slightly absurd, possibly allegorical, written in prose that is
simple, stylish and deadpan. All is present and correct in this,
his eighth novel ****
*Daily Telegraph*
Another of his trademark, pitch-perfect, blackly funny fables … all
this oddness seems to be peculiarly familiar and utterly endearing.
It is archetypal Mills, still ploughing his own fabulous literary
furrow, which has led Thomas Pynchon to describe him as “a
demented, deadpan comic wonder” ... The literary world’s most
original voice
*Herald*
Master of comic deadpan Magnus Mills invites us to observe the
nuanced etiquette of settlers in the “Great Field” … The story
starts with news of a surplus of milk pudding, and this sets the
tone for the texture of the prose itself: emphatically bland, yet
surprisingly nourishing if taken with a pinch of salt … It’s quite
an achievement
*Independent on Sunday*
Magnus Mills is unique. There is simply no equivalent of his brand
of domestic absurdism. Partly this is a matter of style, the
unmistakably deadpan voice concealing the precise construction of
each book, each sentence even, under an artless veneer. But the
distinctiveness also reflects his preoccupations … Mills is the
most British of anarchists, something that his brilliantly crafty
seventh novel, The Field of the Cloth of Gold, makes explicit
*Independent*
He’s original, he’s eccentric – and I predict that Magnus Mills
will still be fascinating his admirers 100 years from now … The
surrealism works because the story is anchored firmly in human
emotions, and told with Mills’ trademark off-the-wall comedy. I
loved this bag of bizarreness
*Kate Saunders, Saga*
Slightly absurd, possibly allegorical, written in simple, stylish,
deadpan prose, each as singular, witty and engaging as its
predecessor … So what is it all about? Is it a fable? A parable? An
allegory? A bit of fun? All four? Part of the pleasure of reading
Mills is trying to work out what he is getting at, if he is getting
at anything at all. I would say that anyone with a grasp of history
will nod along and anyone with a sense of the present will
anxiously check the sky for storm clouds
*Sunday Telegraph*
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