Using the bits and pieces of one man's past, John Lanchester has drawn a fully dimensional life and, in the process, made in Mr. Phillips an Everyman for our times.
Associate Editor, Culture, for the Guardian. Editor of Tales of Two Londons: Stories from a Fractured City.
@GalleyBeggars Mr Phillips, John Lanchester, though whether you’d call it big or not is another matter. I was rather dismissive when I first read it, but it has stayed with me.
"The Debt to Pleasure...was greeted with such approval around the world (translated into more than 20 languages) as to make it a very tough act to follow. With Mr. Phillips, he has given readers that rare thing, a second novel better than the first." --Thomas Lynch, The Los Angeles Times Book Review
"Lanchester triumphs again as the poet laureate of male hysteria, creating a fully imagined, entirely convincing, and utterly unlikely hero." --Boston Sunday Globe