DNF at 10%

I'm sorry, but I found the prose style so irritating that it completely detracted from the story: for example, on learning that his son is being bullied 'Dyer had a vision of his son like a prisoner of the Tupi Indians, suffering in silence the punishment that they reserved for their bitterest enemies, wrapped in a writhing coil of poisonous toads which had started to shrink around his neck.' Um, really? Your son is being bullied and that's what you think?

Inappropriate and stretched metaphors abound: ' the remark detonated something in Marvar', a woman has 'a deranged eye' for no discernible reason as she asks a perfectly normal question ('swivelling to peck him with tiny questions about South America'), another woman is 'wild-looking' as she hands her daughter her cello from the car, an idea is 'stuck, impossible to pour back into a frosted glass', a prospectus is 'woollier than one of Vivien's tea cosies'... I could go on and bear in mind I couldn't bear to read beyond 10% with this lurid, over-reaching writing. The story might have been brilliant but the prose had me gritting my teeth - not for me, sorry!

I began by liking this character-study/thriller a lot, but it began to pall quite badly in the second half.

The story is of John Dyer, an ex-journalist now divorced and living in Oxford where his son attends the private school where Dyer himself went. The opening is a slow revelation of Dyer’s circumstances and mental state which I found very well done. Then, Dyer finds himself in possession of some potentially world-changing information which a lot of people in governments and big, powerful international businesses are very keen to get their hands on. It becomes a sort of espionage novel, with Dyer’s great moral dilemma about what to do at its heart.

Much of the book is taken up with Dyer’s life and character, plus that of those around him – wealthy, rather self-obsessed people, some of whom have rather sinister backgrounds of one sort or another. The thriller part is rather less than thrilling a lot of the time, with Dyer being infuriatingly indecisive and rather pusillanimous in the guise of weighing up moral matters, and the denouement doesn’t help this. Also, Nicholas Shakespeare’s style becomes a bit wearisome. He is a very good writer in many ways, but especially after about half way I found the prose becoming a little show-offy and mannered.

As an example, every so often he slips from a normal narrative past-tense to present tense for a few sentences and then back again, like this:
“He dashed into the Dragon Cinema, and bought a ticket to a film that had already begun. He fell asleep after ten minutes, and when he wakes up the three people in the cinema are leaving. It’s the middle of the day as he emerges. He has no memory of what he’s watched. He feels in another time zone, another country. In slow steps, he headed back towards the town centre, plunged into a canal of images.”
Now, perhaps I just haven’t studied English Literature to a sufficiently advanced level to appreciate some subtle emotional intensity in this technique, but to me it was just extremely irritating – and it got more frequent and more irritating the longer the book went on. It kept throwing me out of the narrative, leaving me trying to re-orientate myself and wrestle with the prose and I eventually got very grumpy about it. (And “a canal of images”? Seriously?)

There are also rather over-long episodes seemingly designed to show us how much Shakespeare knows about academic Oxford, fly-fishing and other subjects, at least one monumentally convenient coincidence and so on.

I was disappointed overall. I expected a thoughtful, insightful, well-constructed and involving book from such a respected author, but I didn’t really get it in the end and was left feeling that there is less here than meets the eye. It’s by no means a bad book, but it’s not all that good either.

(My thanks to Vintage Publishing for an ARC via NetGalley.)

This is a brilliant book. Shakespeare is a wordsmith, apparent in every carefully chosen word. The words paint a picture that start off gently, then pull you in to the tight plot. John Dyer, recently returned to Oxford from Brazil, leads a quiet life and looking after his young son. However, a supposedly chance meeting on the sidelines of a football pitch, drags him into a taut game of cat and mouse. Rustam Marvar, an Iranian scientist, tells Dyer about an earth shattering scientific discovery and then disappears. This leads to a story which intrigued and excites in breathtaking measure. The characters are complex and beautifully written, each with their own diverse personalities. I felt as if I knew them personally. In a couple of places there are some scientific explanations which could slow the plot down. However, these are handled well and were interesting. Would I read another book by this author? Very definitely. Would I recommend this one? Unreservedly. A beautifully written book which I thoroughly enjoyed.

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for an ARC of this book.

My thoughts of this brilliant powerful thriller was brilliant outstanding characters a story that packs a punch

I have read a book by Nicholas Shakespeare before; and continue to be impressed with his writing. In this suspense thriller, John Dyer is an ex-Phoenix prep school pupil and ex-foreign correspondent journalist. He is now researching a book whilst having his son educated at the prep school. it has vastly changed since he was there: with most parents immensely rich.
When one of the other parents goes missing following a confession to Dyer, there begins a web of intrigues with Dyer being central to them.
The novel keeps you guessing and there is a glorious conclusion on the last page.
The characters are well constructed and I couldn't guess what was happening. A really good read.
Thank you to Netgalley for a pre-publication copy in exchange for a review.

A thriller set in Oxford with the former journalist John Dyer at the centre of the story.

Nicholas Shakespeare utilises his considerable lexicon and uses his word palette to construct numerous exquisite sentences. This is not a fast paced thriller with explosions left right and centre (there are none) but manages to convey a real world feel to a conundrum that has massive repercussions for the human race. Would you end up making the decision Dyer did?

The tale is not just confined to Oxford as a number of different countries are mentioned and some insightful social commentary. The use of an English public school to "launder" children from other shores is one that is indicative of a world that has undergone significant changes over the 30 years since Dyer was at the school his son Leandro ended up attending.

The book is unlike anything I have read for some time and is well worth your attention.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC.

In present day Oxford, ex-foreign correspondent John Dyer is undertaking research for a new book he’s writing on the Tupi people, one of the more numerous groups indigenous to Brazil. He spends much of his time at the Taylorian Institution Library, associated to Oxford University, where he reads obscure volumes and takes notes. But today he has an engagement at his old prep school, the Phoenix, where his eleven year old son Leandro is currently a pupil. It appears that Leandro and another boy, Samir, have been the victims of bullying and he has been summoned to the school where the physical education teacher is to address the issue.

It seems that it’s all linked to Leandro and Samir’s recent promotion to the school’s first XI football team in that Vasily’s resultant demotion from the team led to him acting out some revengeful retribution. Whilst awaiting the outcome of the school hearing, Dyer meets and chats to Samir’s father, Rustrom Marvar, an Iranian physicist who has been granted temporary release by his government to work with a team at the university. We’re also introduced to a number of other parents who have children at the school: Vasily’s Russian mother (who Dyer has a fancy for), a man who works for the Diplomatic Service who was at the prep school himself at the same time as Dyer, a rich French-Canadian hedge-fund manager with a finger in a lot of pies and an American nuclear scientist who works at the same lab as Marvar.

What plays out here is, in part, the story of how Dyer struggles to find his new identity: back in Oxford after a long stay in South America and lacking the financial clout of other parents with children at this exclusive school. But to a larger extent it’s a tale of intrigue as the cast of characters get caught up rumours surrounding the holy grail of nuclear fusion, mysterious comings and goings and political shenanigans aplenty. There’s a moral conundrum for Dyer too as he tries to decide how best to play his particular hand.

It’s all very well executed by the author and if the language is a little highfalutin then it does at least fit with the somewhat pompous circle of characters he’s created here. My well thumbed dictionary was put to use more than once but even that failed me when lines of Latin, Portuguese and even Tupi were woven into the text. But at least I did recognise the line from a Ray LaMontagne song, dropped in at one point. Overall it’s book that made me think a little more about my own life and about wider geopolitical issues too, and all this wrapped up in a pretty good yarn. Can’t really argue with that.

Nicholas Shakespeare: The Sandpit, Vintage (Penguin Random House UK) 9781787301771, C Format Paperback, May2020
German Edition: “Boomerang”, Hoffmann & Campe, Hardback, Mai 2020,
Vintage who publish Nicholas Shakespeare’s “The Sandpit” compare his novel with Graham Greene and John Le Carre, there is definitely a likeness. In my view the element of a thriller was not the dominating red string running through the book; it is the captivating narration told in the present of a journalist, John Dyer, who has recently returned from Rio de Janeiro to Oxford where he is leading a quiet life, writing a book about a Brazilian tribe, and getting himself involuntarily mixed up in the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear physicist, Rustum Marvar, the father of one of his son Leonardo’s friends who is attending his old posh prep school. Dyer seems to be the last person who saw him before his disappeared without a trace. Suddenly some people, parents he knows from watching his son’s weekly football games, start inviting and questioning him about his friendship with Marvar displaying great interest in his knowledge of what appears to be a groundbreaking breakthrough Rustum is rumored to have made at his lab. Soon Dyer finds himself in a dangerous situation facing an impossible dilemma: how to guard his and his son’s life and how not to betray the trust Marvar had placed in him.
“The Sandpit” is a very clever story without using heart-throbbing thriller effects but keeping you hooked just the same. I particularly liked how neatly Nicholas Shakespeare tied it all up in the end.