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Oxygen
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Synopsis
Oxygen by Andrew Miller
In the summer of 1997, four people reach a turning point: Alice Valentine, who lies gravely ill in her West Country home; her two sons, one still searching for a sense of direction, the other fighting to keep his acting career and marriage afloat; and Laszlo Lazar, who leads a comfortable life in Paris yet is plagued by his memories of the 1956 Hungarian uprising. For each, the time has come to assess what matters in life, and all will be forced to take part in an act of liberation - though not necessarily the one foreseen.
Comparison: David Liss, Joseph O'Connor, Barry Unsworth
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Reviews
'A writer of astonishing gifts who peels his characters back to the quick with a language that never misses a note ... his complex characters are unravelled with a depth and elegance that is breathtaking'
Irish Times Books of the Year
'Confirms his reputation as one of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind ... a thoughtful, complex and satisfying work.'
Sunday Times
'Miller's use of imagery is always unexpected, sometimes astonishing ... It is also impossible to put down'
Independent on Sunday
'Miller is a writer of such astonishing prose that wherever he takes his characters they speak a rare emotional truth.'
Scotland on Sunday
'Highly accomplished ... Breathe in and enjoy.'
Literary Review
'[A] beautifully written novel ... it grabs your attention to the last page.'
Daily Express
The four main characters in this beautifully written novel have all come to crisis points in their lives. In England, Alice Valentine, a retired headmistress, is dying of cancer. Her favourite son Larry, based in America, has an acting career and a marriage which are suffering from his self-destructive lifestyle, and a six-year-old daughter who is already seeing a therapist. Alice's other son, Alec, an ex-teacher and now a translator, is fighting his dependency on his mother and his tendency to flee what is difficult in life while trying to care for her during her illness. Laszlo Lazar, a gay Hungarian exile living in Paris, whose play Alex is translating, is unable to forget the way he failed his former lover during the 1956 uprising and is forces to question his subsequent apolitical stance. After the prizewinning Ingenious Pain (1997) and Casanova (1998), this is Andrew Miller's first contemporary novel. Set on 1997, the year of the Hale-Bop comet, its characters face dramatic life changes which force them to make a choice if they have the courage to do so. Larry and Alec find very different ways in which to take responsibility for their lives, while, by revisiting the past, Alice and Laszlo come to their own forms of accommodation with the present. Andrew Miller has written a deeply felt narrative which ranges across two continents, from L.A's porn studios to post-communist Budapest, and skilfully interweaves the lives of its different characters. Given the contradictions and compromises of our histories, and the alienation and darkness that surrounds us, the novel seems to be saying, it is still legitimate to choose, if we can, to live with optimism and to become reconciled with the past, in other words to seek the oxygen of the title. This is a wonderful book which is highly recommended. (Kirkus UK)
About the Author
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Andrew Miller was born in Bristol in 1960. He has lived in Spain, Japan, Ireland and France, and currently lives in Somerset. His first novel, INGENIOUS PAIN, was published by Sceptre in 1997 and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour prize in Italy. He has since written five novels: CASANOVA, OXYGEN, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Booker Prize in 2001, THE OPTIMISTS, ONE MORNING LIKE A BIRD and PURE which won the Costa Novel Award.
Author photo © Abbie Trayler-Smith
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