Lanny

Fearless, chimerical and exquisitely formed, the latest book from Max Porter matches the audacity of his debut novel, Grief is the Thing with Feathers. Rapturously received by our booksellers, Lanny is a tour de force of style, substance and near-mythic power that interrogates the very form of the book itself. A child, a family, a village; a community built on ancient soil, shelter to generations of lives and the tales they tell. For all time, Dead Papa Toothwort has forever walked amongst them all. Now, he is drawn again from his slumber, drawn to something new and precious. The boy. Lanny. Fusing the modern with the mythic and the prosaic with the polyphonic, Porter’s spare, spectral novel mines folklore, fable and the deep-dug tendrils of village life for something both age-old and vibrantly alive. Drawing admiring comparisons to the work of Alan Garner and Barney Norris, Porter’s sublime lyrical intensity hymns the rural whilst remaining alive to its myriad weaknesses and contradictions. This is state-of-the-nation rendered as pagan legend and a poignant paean to childhood, friendship and landscape. One of the very finest novels of the year, Lanny is a staggering literary achievement that promises to become a modern classic.