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the complete review - fiction

The Restraint of Beasts

by
Magnus Mills

[an overview of the reviews and critical reactions]

general information | review summaries | review and reception notes | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
Read it when it came out -- before the complete review existed


Chances that we will review it:
Decent

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  Review Consensus:

  Generally very impressed

  From the Reviews:

• "Fast unmerklich und ohne jeden Zeigefinger aber verwandelt sich die Geschichte zum Schluß in eine finstere Parabel. Erst dann erkennt man die Kunstfertigkeit des Autors." - Friedmar Apel, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
  
  
• "(A) witty, intricate fable about a working-class hell constructed by its own inhabitants. Mills, himself a former fence builder and bus driver, writes merciless deadpan dialogue." - Anthony Bourdain, The New York Times Book Review
  
  
• "As dull as this sounds, the pleasure achieved by Mills' text comes when a reader self-consciously realizes he's become riveted to a shaggy-dog story about fence-building and death, a story that will not make a lick of sense until the last sentence in the book." - David Bowman, San Francisco Chronicle
  
  
• "(A) terrific debut. (...) Mills makes the life of the manual laborer deadly but never dull." - Elizabeth Gleick, Time
  
  
• "Mills's tone is carefully deadpan; his simple, somewhat leaden, narrative style allows for a constant stream of small comic touches. (...) One feels he has one eye on the current political agenda." - Will Silk, Times Literary Supplement

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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Notes about the Reviews
and the Book's Reception:

       Lots of press for the bus-driving first-time author, especially when it was reported that he received an enormous advance. A Booker-shortlisting helped attract additional interest.

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Links:

• Arcade publicity page
• 10/18 publicity page
• Suhrkamp publicity page

• Agony Column
• BrothersJudd.com
• Chronicart.com (French)
• Empty Quarter (French)
• L'Express (French)
• Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (German)
• LeserEins (German)
• LeseLust (German)
• Tom Liehr (German)
• literaturkritik.de (German)
• The Richmond Review
• San Francisco Chronicle
• Spike Magazine
• Time
• u-lit.de (German)

• The complete review's Magnus Mills page.
• Interview at The Barcelona Review

• All Quiet On The Orient Express
• Explorers of the New Century
• [The Maintenance of Headway]
• The Scheme for Full Employment
• Three to See the King

• See Index of contemporary British fiction under review

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About the Author:

       British author Magnus Mills was born in 1954. He has written several novels.

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© 2009-2012 the complete review

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