A tad purple for my taste. ( )

I enjoyed this one a lot and think Chancellor may be somebody to watch. Part of my enjoyment is no doubt because I'm a sucker for books about art, and this one ticks that box. I'm also a sucker for absurdity, paradoxes, and at least a fairly accessible veneer of erudition, and the book has those in varying degrees as well.

I think it could be an interesting book to do a proper study of sometime. There are enough recurring notions (paradoxes, the liminal, the monstrous, exploitation, memory and environment, what it means to be political, the role of things like sport and art in culture, and surely others) that there's plenty to latch onto for study. I'd also be curious to better understand the book's structure; it seems like the sort of book that might be meticulously structured according to some myth cycle, for example, but that's just a shot in the dark with no basis in actual study of the structure.

Chancellor writes good sentences and weaves scenes together reasonably well. The story stretches credibility in a number of ways, especially in the last quarter or so, but I was willing to look past that given the book's other merits.
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Such a weird book I'm not sure what to think about it. I liked the father-son story, but many of the plot points struck me as warmed-over John Irving. (Kurt the wheelchair-bound artist, I'm looking at you.) Overwritten in parts, but there were a few scenes I really liked. ( )

Such a weird book I'm not sure what to think about it. I liked the father-son story, but many of the plot points struck me as warmed-over John Irving. (Kurt the wheelchair-bound artist, I'm looking at you.) Overwritten in parts, but there were a few scenes I really liked. ( )

This book had appeared on my radar when the great John Warner wrote about it for the Chicago Tribune in his Biblioracle column but it wasn't until it made the ToB bracket (thanks in no small part to John's advocacy, I'd wager) that I actually picked it up - and it's a testament to how a good book can go unnoticed without a few important activists. For this book is not a groundbreaker, it is not going to change your life - but it is a damn good debut novel; it's like a more serious Where'd You Go, Bernadette, taking that novel's screwball world-travelling tendencies and playing them a little straighter. Chancellor has a lot of thoughts - about art, philosophy, the classics & mythology, international relations, Iceland, probably many others - and we need more novelists who've got thoughts and want to share them. Is it a perfect book? No, but how many first novels really are? Did I enjoy it? Yes, I most certainly did.

Full review at RB: http://ragingbiblioholism.com/2015/02/11/a-brave-man-seven-storeys-tall/

PLUS! An interview with the author on So Many Damn Books! Listen on iTunes: itun.es/i6Bn7DX ( )