“Vivid three-dimensional characterization, the unsettling social setting, and the author’s superb handling of suburban evil make this an absolutely compelling read” (Good Book Guide, UK).
“Gerald Lynch has created a brilliant, black social comedy which turns into a gripping murder mystery. He is a very skilful writer who deserves to be widely read” (Dillons Bookseller Choice, UK).
“Lynch allows his characters to breathe and to develop at their own pace. They all sound … as if they are speaking their own lines, and speaking them from a depth of implicit experience, rather than talking up on a bare stage. … Troutstream is like a place of the mind, a linguistic confection rather than a documentary record, and all the more real and engaging for that . … This is a quite remarkable book, further evidence of the vitality of contemporary Canadian writing” (The Times of London, UK).
“Troutstream plants the seed of promise for a truly gifted writer. It’s as if Lynch spent years trying out various forms of experimental prose before finally finding a mature style, extraordinarily expressive and truly out of the ordinary but at the same time unselfconscious and unprepossessing. If he did, Lynch spared us the earlier dabbling and came out wings unfurled. … I look forward to Lynch’s next” (Quill & Quire).
“Gerald Lynch was born in Ireland, and now teaches English at the University of Ottawa. His first novel bears these hallmarks in its setting and its style–the Joycean love of words mixes with the small-town social observation of Flann O’Brien. In fact, this is where Troutstream’s real strengths lie. The suburban satire, its snobberies and petty jealousies, are worthy of Updike” (W Magazine, UK).
“This book is brilliantly written … insidious and spooky. Troutstream … is one of the most unusual and stylish murder mysteries I have ever read” (Event, UK).”
“The book may look more like stories and weird character studies united by a single place, but this doesn’t really stretch the term novel too far, mainly because it is all just so, well–wonderfully novel. Lynch is categorically a writer to watch” (Independent on Sunday, UK).
“At once disquieting, hilarious, ugly and exhilarating, Troutstream threatens to do for Lynch what The Wasp Factory did for Iain Banks” (Paint It Red, UK).
“The strength of the novel is Lynch’s style of writing. He uses a prose that clings and coruscates like shattered glass. … To read his sentences, at times, is enough; there is pure pleasure to be obtained from such genuinely good writing” (The Sunday Press, Ireland).
“Troutstream is a superb novel, an elegant commentary on the wasted state of Canadian and North American culture” (Globe and Mail).
“A raucous, politically incorrect satire of suburban life. … Intriguing, subversive” (Toronto Star).
“It should be read and re-read and talked about” (Ottawa Citizen)
“It’s hard to know how to start a rave review without raving. Troutstream is a serious and important first novel, one that draws equally on Gerald Lynch’s comprehensive and synthetic view of Canadian literature and his wry and ironic sense of humour” (The Canadian Forum)
“Troutstream is a funhouse of misanthropic satirical intent. … It is also a skilled ventriloquist’s act featuring both bizarre and mundane voices.… By displaying the multitudinous idiosyncrasies of Troutstream’s citizenry, Lynch is interrogating the boundaries of community and disputing the very possibility of human settlement with no discord” (Canadian Literature).
Copyright: Gerald Lynch