Extract:
“The novel also gains resonance from echoes of other works, in particular Eliot’s The Waste Land. Fisher may be 100 miles north of Margate Sands, but, like Eliot, he is busy connecting nothing with nothing; his name is a reminder of Eliot’s Fisher King, that emblem of sterility; and the conversations he has with other holidaymakers are strongly reminiscent of the snatches of chatter in Eliot’s poem. (In another novel, the darkly titled Married Past Redemption (1993), a character unknowingly quotes Eliot, so he’s certainly in his mind, and Holiday has its sprinkling of other literary references; Fisher is, after all, cultured man. Middleton would also, as a musician, have been aware that Edwin Fischer was the name of a particularly good pianist, best known for his interpretations of Bach.)
Such resonances can be taken or left; the novel’s power, which builds slowly but unmistakably, is its own. And Middleton is the most forensically acute of observers: if you want to know exactly what Britain was like in the early 1970s, then you won’t do better than to read this.”
How my heart sings 