Suffocation
Alex Clark
- Oxygen by Andrew Miller
Sceptre, 323 pp, £14.99, September 2001, ISBN 0 340 72825 6
Flamboyant historical staging characterised Andrew Miller’s first two novels, Ingenious Pain and Casanova: his third makes use of a very different kind of theatricality. Here, in two discrete, barely overlapping stories – one of a dying woman attended by her sons, the other of an exiled Hungarian playwright tempted by a shameful memory into a last-ditch act of political redemption – the stage directions are slow and deliberate, the settings minimal and swiftly sketched. Every action carries a purposeful weight that leaves no room for chaotic exuberance.
You are not logged in
- If you have already registered please login here
- If you are using the site for the first time please register here
- If you would like access to all 12,000 articles subscribe here
- Institutions or university library users please login here
- Learn more about our institutional subscriptions here