{"product_id":"dartmouth-park-isbn-9781635421675","title":"Dartmouth Park","description":"\u003cb\u003eIn this timely and explosive novel, an academic’s seemingly mundane midlife crisis takes an alarming turn after his visit to a Greek monastery.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt’s February 2019. Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian with a German wife and a troubled nineteen-year-old son, is on his way back from a conference in Norway when he has an unexpected and disturbing experience that completely alters his view of the life that he has been living and the world that surrounds him. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBelieving that Inés, an attractive Spanish sociologist whom he met at the conference, can shed light on what he is feeling, he travels to Cádiz to see her. But his journey doesn’t end there. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that he appears to find unbearable? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence or is he utterly self-deluded? And if he is in denial about what he is doing, how far will he go to avoid facing the truth?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn this highly original and unsettling novel, one of the UK’s most celebrated writers portrays an ordinary man in an extraordinary dilemma, a dilemma that will push him to the very edge of annihilation and disaster.“A masterfully ambiguous depiction of how the sincere convert is often at risk of becoming a dangerous zealot…\u003ci\u003eDartmouth Park\u003c\/i\u003e provides a powerfully evocative catalyst for thought and feeling.”\u003ci\u003e —New York Times Book Review  \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“I devoured \u003ci\u003eDartmouth Park\u003c\/i\u003e in a single sitting. The sense of dislocation—and location—made it seem like a dream of another life, all of it so lyrical and yet narratively acute. A wonderful achievement.” —Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of \u003ci\u003eThe Feral Detective\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMotherless Brooklyn\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A novel that turns a midlife crisis inside out, rewardingly…the result, in Thomson’s expert hands, is fast-paced and headlong; the book ends up rewiring the reader’s sense of what’s banal and what’s not. A work about estrangement and solitude that’s surprisingly rapid, engaging, light-footed.” —\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eRupert Thomson \u003c\/b\u003eis the author of thirteen highly acclaimed novels, including \u003ci\u003eKatherine Carlyle; Secrecy; The Insult\u003c\/i\u003e, which was short-listed for the Guardian Fiction Prize and selected by David Bowie as one of his 100 Must-Read Books of All Time; \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Revelation\u003c\/i\u003e, which was made into a feature film by Ana Kokkinos; and \u003ci\u003eDeath of a Murderer\u003c\/i\u003e, which was short-listed for the Costa Novel of the Year Award. His memoir, \u003ci\u003eThis Party’s Got to Stop\u003c\/i\u003e, was named Writers’ Guild Non-Fiction Book of the Year. He lives in London.\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eNausea \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e What triggered it was utterly innocuous\u003cbr\u003eA young woman standing a few feet away from him took out a travel card and tapped it against the card reader, the gesture instinctive, automatic, like a reflex\u003cbr\u003eThere was also the noise the card reader made \u003cbr\u003eA kind of beep\u003cbr\u003eThen there was the tram’s interior, the metal poles upright and painted orange, the seats upholstered in a practical, hard-wearing charcoal gray\u003cbr\u003eThough he was sitting still, his head began to float sideways and backwards, the motion frictionless and easy, like an ice cube sliding across a pane of glass\u003cbr\u003eBut that wasn’t all\u003cbr\u003eA hand had wrapped itself around his brain, and it was squeezing\u003cbr\u003eHe was worried he might throw up or pass out \u003cbr\u003eHe was worried he might scream\u003cbr\u003eHe couldn’t think\u003cbr\u003eThere was nothing left to think \u003ci\u003ewith\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e If he suddenly found what surrounded him unbearable, it was because it was artificial\u003cbr\u003eEverything had been designed and manufactured, and he was trapped in it\u003cbr\u003eHe had also become aware of possibilities that might or might not have been explored\u003cbr\u003eBehind that beep, a thousand other beeps\u003cbr\u003eBehind that upright orange metal pole, a pole made out of something different, or molded into a different shape, or painted a different color\u003cbr\u003eSomehow all the conceivable alternatives were still there, stacked up behind the version that had been decided on, and all of them unnoticed, overlooked\u003cbr\u003eExcept by him\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe had boarded the tram at Nonneseteren\u003cbr\u003eHe was on his way back to London, after a four-day conference in Bergen\u003cbr\u003eStudying the map above the window opposite, he counted twenty-five stops to the airport\u003cbr\u003eThe journey would take approximately three-quarters of an hour\u003cbr\u003eHe ran his eyes through the various stations\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eParadis, Hop, Lagunen\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn normal circumstances, he would have reveled in the foreign sounds\u003cbr\u003e That afternoon they made him feel nauseous\u003cbr\u003eBehind each station’s name lurked all the names that station might have had instead\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe tram slowed down\u003cbr\u003eA series of electronic notes, a sort of jingle, and then a woman’s voice\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eKronstad\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe lowered his eyes\u003cbr\u003eHow many women had auditioned for that role?\u003cbr\u003eLike an image from a hall of mirrors, the queue of applicants curved off into a distance that seemed infinite\u003cbr\u003eAs for the voice itself, decisions would have been taken about character and tone\u003cbr\u003eHis mind began to spin and swirl with all the options, and once again he had the feeling that his head was leaving his shoulders, his neck as soft as chewing gum that has been chewed for hours\u003cbr\u003eHe had become the host for a sensitivity—a \u003ci\u003ehyper\u003c\/i\u003esensitivity—that he couldn’t regulate or even influence\u003cbr\u003eHe was tempted to get off the tram\u003cbr\u003eHe could sit on a bench and breathe the cold Norwegian air \u003cbr\u003eWould it make any difference, though?\u003cbr\u003eWhat if he felt no better?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe looked out of the window, hoping to distract himself, but the tram had stopped next to a billboard\u003cbr\u003e He didn’t notice what the product was, only that it began with an \u003ci\u003eA\u003c\/i\u003e, and that the apex of the \u003ci\u003eA \u003c\/i\u003ewas colored white, as if the letter was a snowcapped mountain\u003cbr\u003eThis was the most unbearable thing so far \u003cbr\u003eIt was so obviously made-up\u003cbr\u003eDozens of ideas would have been discussed, presented, and rejected in favor of the one that now confronted him\u003cbr\u003eBehind the surface of reality lay other surfaces, other realities\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBehind every single thing was something else\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe brought his eyes back to the tram’s interior, and there, as before, were the seats and the poles\u003cbr\u003eThis is just a ride on a tram, he told himself, a ride on a tram in Bergen\u003cbr\u003eHe hung his head again and closed his eyes\u003cbr\u003eHe could still hear the beeping of the card reader as new passengers got on\u003cbr\u003eThe sequence of electronic notes \u003cbr\u003eThe female voice\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eSlettebakken\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe opened his eyes and stared at the smooth gray floor \u003cbr\u003eThe smoothness was sickening\u003cbr\u003eThe grayness too\u003cbr\u003eHe couldn’t close his eyes or keep them open \u003cbr\u003eThere was nowhere he could look\u003cbr\u003e I might have to kill myself, he thought\u003cbr\u003eIt seemed like a perfectly reasonable response to what he was going through\u003cbr\u003eIt might even be the only solution available to him \u003cbr\u003eHow else could he make it stop?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMiraculously, he managed to hang on until he reached the airport\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe stepped off the tram\u003cbr\u003eThe nausea was still there, though it was milder, more subdued \u003cbr\u003eIt reminded him of what happened when he took medication for a headache\u003cbr\u003eThe pain might lift, but it would leave a memory, a kind of afterimage\u003cbr\u003eA place that was dazed and listless \u003cbr\u003eHollowed out\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eWith an hour to spare before his flight was due to board, he found himself standing in front of a seafood restaurant called Fiskeriet\u003cbr\u003e Here again the feeling was one of overload or surfeit \u003cbr\u003eThere was a prawn salad, a grilled salmon salad, a smoked salmon salad, a crab salad, and a salad with tuna, red onion, and black olives\u003cbr\u003e And that was just the salads\u003cbr\u003e There were also fish cakes and fish soup and fried fish and steamed mussels\u003cbr\u003e Choice was one of the hallmarks of modern society \u003cbr\u003eChoice was a kind of hell\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe couldn’t have said how long he stood there for, though there came a point when he attracted the attention of the woman behind the counter\u003cbr\u003e If she thought he was behaving suspiciously, she would call Security, and then there would be trouble\u003cbr\u003e He selected the dish that was closest to him—a prawn salad—then paid for it and took it over to a table\u003cbr\u003e The woman seated nearby was dressed in a dark-blue blazer and a white skirt\u003cbr\u003e She might have just stepped off a yacht\u003cbr\u003e She had ordered a plate of fish-and-chips and a glass of rosé \u003cbr\u003eHe doubted it had been difficult for her\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHe took a breath, but couldn’t seem to fill his lungs\u003cbr\u003e It was as if he had been transported to a planet with a different atmosphere, and he was struggling to acclimatize\u003cbr\u003e He picked up a wedge of lemon and squeezed a few drops onto his prawns\u003cbr\u003e The woman in the blazer looked at him\u003cbr\u003e It was the kind of look you give a lift door when the lift is on its way\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer mind was almost certainly elsewhere\u003cbr\u003e He ate slowly, feeling he had made the wrong choice \u003cbr\u003ePerhaps they were all wrong choices\u003cbr\u003e Was he even hungry?\u003cbr\u003e He forced himself to go on eating\u003cbr\u003e He remembered a faint taste of salt water \u003cbr\u003eNothing else\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eHalf an hour later he set off towards his gate","brand":"Other Press","offers":[{"title":"Default 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