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the complete review - fiction

The Gray House

by
Mariam Petrosyan

[an overview of the reviews and critical reactions]

general information | review summaries | links | about the author

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Why we haven't reviewed it yet:
Intrigued but not completely won over


Chances that we will review it:
It's possible

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  From the Reviews:

• "Sorte de « roman monstre », par son ampleur, par les curiosités et les excroissances qui le traversent à l’image de certains de ses personnages, La Maison dans laquelle est traversé par les influences de Lewis Carroll, de Rudyard Kipling, de Richard Bach (Jonathan Livingstone) ou de Bob Dylan (des extraits de Tarantula, sa prose expérimentale de 1971, y figurent parfois en exergue). Un mélange de Tim Burton, de Harry Potter, de Stephen King et de Sa Majesté des mouches (William Golding). Un univers qui déroute autant qu’il envoûte." - Christian Desmeules, Le Devoir
  
  
• "The Gray House is enigmatic and fantastical, comic and postmodern, flawed but brilliant, with elements of multiple genres -- Rowling meets Rushdie via Tartt. (...) The Gray House is a Marmite book: worshipped by some, criticised by others as meandering nonsense, lacking either true magic or convincing realism. The plot can feel frustratingly serpentine" - Phoebe Taplin, The Guardian
  
  
• "Her greatest strengths here are her world-building and linguistic creativity, although one has to wonder how much of a role translator Yuri Machkasov plays in casting that spell. Beginning with a straightforward, realistic style, Ms. Petrosyan slowly and carefully leads the reader step by step through suspension of belief to the House’s inner workings, which manifest in increasingly fluid sentences and offbeat vocabulary. (...) The plot isn’t exactly straightforward either, which is, perhaps, the point." - Leigh Anne Focareta, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
  
  
• "(M)assively absorbing and sometimes frustrating (.....) The witty dialogue, sharply drawn characters, and endlessly unfolding riddle of the house’s true nature buoy a narrative that sometimes seems as meandering as the hallways of the house itself, a series of entertaining anecdotes rather than a cohesive whole." - Publishers Weekly

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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Links:

• ELKOST International Literary Agency information page
• LiveBook publicity page
• Monsieur Toussaint Louverture publicity page

• actusf.com (French)
• Addict Culture (French)
• L'Albatros (French)
• Les Carnets du Pr. Platypus (French)
• Le Chat du Cheshire (French)
• Coincescheznous (French)
• Le Devoir (French)
• Фантастика и фэнтези (Russian)
• The Guardian
• Kirkus Reviews
• lelitteraire.com (French)
• Les Méconnus (French)
• L'ours inculte (French)
• Philosophie (French)
• Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
• Publishers Weekly
• Quoi de neuf sur ma pile ? (French)
• Super Flux (French)
• Textualités (French)

• See Index of literature from Russia and countries of the former Soviet Union
• Other books from AmazonCrossing

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About the Author:

       Russian-writing Armenian author Mariam Petrosyan (Մարիամ Պետրոսյան; Мариам Петросян) was born in 1969.

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