Do You like book All Quiet On The Orient Express (2015)?
Bland, deadpan narrator is just about to pack up his tent in England's Lake District for a trip to India, when he gets asked by the campground owner to paint a fence green. This project leads to an increasingly mundane pileup of other odd jobs, until you notice his India trip is out of the question and... guess, just guess.Although a lot of folks compare this with Kafka, I think it works as a wonderfully inbred stepson of The Third Policeman, complete with a lukewarm "hell is other people" menace and the sense that the quaint setting might be closing in on both reader and hero. There's also a jailbait temptress, ominous darts competitions, blinkered milk delivery training, hoarded barrels to be sold for cash, and lots of green paint.I should also mention that, though this is set in the Lake District, the novel hit me the right way round in the way these reserved Brits are ringers for the hard-working passive-aggressive Minnesota Nice phenotype. Extra star for that.
—Mark Desrosiers
Expect no journeys to Eastern Europe in All Quiet on the Orient Express. I will give very little away if I say that the narrator finishing his last few days of his camping holiday in the Lakes never departs. Blessed or cursed with a dab hand for odd jobs and a good nature, the hapless holidaymaker little-by-little finds himself put to work and unable to escape the mysterious village community where he finds himself stuck. Not one for fancy descriptions, Mills instead combines a great ear for dialogue with a sly sense of humour. Both are in evidence again here. One particular highlight which springs to mind is when the local shopkeeper starts bemoaning 'the people who come in here asking for things'. These qualities buoy the tale along as the plot surrounding the lake thickens for the stranded tourist. Why is everyone so keen for him to take over Deakin's milk round? What is the significance of Bryan's cardboard crown that he inexplicably sports at all times? When will the landlord finally accept payment for his spiralling tab? A star-off for similarities with The Restraint of Beasts storyline, this is nevertheless another page-turning, thought-provoking good'un by Mills.
—Mr Buchanan
Just as in his first novel, "The Restraint of Beasts," Magnus Mills creates an unnamed, stoic protagonist of little words. I enjoyed this book very much. The main character's hapless adventures and unlikely falling into a series of jobs and bosses and debts and such, all in a vacation spot in which he was camping, seemed almost normal. What a strange little town this was, with debts and tabs being accrued and never paid (until the end), a man wearing a crown, a multitude of green paint, and a milkman who meets with an awful fate (but at least escapes driving the ice cream truck to make milk deliveries). Who knew such a town had so much work to do and so little women?One of my favorite parts was the main character's "social punishment" for not showing up for a darts game, for which he was banished to drink at the pub across the street for two weeks until tempers had cooled.The ending, as the one in Mills' first novel, left a lot to be resolved, but he seemed to care about the ending as much as his character cared about his life's direction; however, the symbolic ending fit perfectly with the theme of the novel.
—L