Downhill Racer

John Sutherland

  • Lying together by D.M. Thomas
    Gollancz, 255 pp, £13.95, June 1990, ISBN 0 575 04802 6
  • The Neon Bible by John Kennedy Toole
    Viking, 162 pp, £12.99, March 1990, ISBN 0 670 82908 0
  • Solomon Gursky was here by Mordecai Richler
    Chatto, 576 pp, £13.95, June 1990, ISBN 0 394 53995 8
  • Death of the Soap Queen by Peter Prince
    Bloomsbury, 277 pp, £13.99, April 1990, ISBN 0 7475 0611 6

Lying together marks the end (one hopes) of a sequence of novels D.M. Thomas began in 1983 with Ararat. Now called in its entirety ‘Russian Nights’, the sequence has been a fluid thing. At various points Thomas projected a trilogy and a quartet. In the event, ‘Russian Nights’ has turned out to be five novels long. Five novels too long, some might say. Thomas admits in his preface that ‘I kept changing my mind about whether the work was finished. I should have realised that an author does not decide this; the work itself decides, by suddenly letting go – as it has now done.’

You are not Logged In

  • If you have already registered login here
  • If you are a print subscriber using the site for the first time please register here
  • If you are not yet a subscriber you can subscribe here
  • If you are a member of a subscribing institution or University library please login here
  • If you have an Institutional print subscription and online access is not included, find out about our Institutional online subscriptions