Max Porter

In came the sound of a song, warm on his creaturely breath. My singing child, bringing me gifts. A second or two before I realise it's not him. Lanny ?

Lanny

I loved it, but I did not understand the ending unfortunately

Jara

This book is spectacular. It makes you feel the warmth of early autumn days and motherly love, pure wrath about the ignorance and spitefulness of ordinary men, hope, despair, and the enchanting wonders of nature and childhood. The way it plays with letters and words resembles more the rhythm of music than of language. 

Nezumi

An entrancing new novel by the author of the prizewinning Grief Is the Thing with Feathers There’s a village an hour from London. It’s no different from many others today: one pub, one church, redbrick cottages, some public housing, and a few larger houses dotted about. Voices rise up, as they might anywhere, speaking of loving and needing and working and dying and walking the dogs. This village belongs to the people who live in it, to the land and to the land’s past. It also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, a mythical figure local schoolchildren used to draw as green and leafy, choked by tendrils growing out of his mouth, who awakens after a glorious nap. He is listening to this twenty-first-century village, to its symphony of talk: drunken confessions, gossip traded on the street corner, fretful conversations in living rooms. He is listening, intently, for a mischievous, ethereal boy whose parents have recently made the village their home. Lanny. With Lanny, Max Porter extends the potent and magical space he created in Grief Is the Thing with Feathers. This brilliant novel will ensorcell readers with its anarchic energy, with its bewitching tapestry of fabulism and domestic drama. Lanny is a ringing defense of creativity, spirit, and the generative forces that often seem under assault in the contemporary world, and it solidifies Porter’s reputation as one of the most daring and sensitive writers of his generation.

A Novel

ravio

yo this book is so cute! 
i love stories like this! its format is a bit unique n i did find myself skimming through some of Papa Toothwort's parts. but oh! i think i like this magical realism stuff! 
the characters are real neat. there's some real serious shit going on in this book too n i think it works perfectly in tandem with the playful mood. 
very whimsical, very magical, in a childlike wonder way. take that and slap some minor nondescript horror elements in it n get this little read. 
will read more from this author!

From the author of Grief Is the Thing with Feathers The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller Longlisted for the Booker Prize 'Startling, moving and overwhelming . . . Wonderful.' Daily Telegraph 'A devastating, disquieting and exhilarating book.' Psychologies 'Books this good don't come along very often.' Maggie O'Farrell 'Stunning and deeply affecting.' Nathan Filer 'A magically beguiling work, a triumph.' Financial Times 'A thing of total joy . . . thrums with rhythm and life.' Observer 'A remarkable feat of literary virtuosity.' Sunday Times Not far from London, there is a village. This village belongs to the people who live in it and to those who lived in it hundreds of years ago. It belongs to England's mysterious past and its confounding present. It belongs to families dead for generations, and to those who have only recently moved here, such as the boy Lanny, and his mum and dad. But it also belongs to Dead Papa Toothwort, who has woken from his slumber in the woods. Dead Papa Toothwort, who is listening to them all.

Megan Snodgrass

4.25

I listened to this book on audio, and immediately after listening to it, I checked out a kindle edition of it to see how the villagers voices were written.. In the audio it is quite fun to hear them talking over each other, a cacophony of gossip, judgment, and random thoughts. I truly enjoyed this book, it wasn't like anything I've read before - part folktale part... part, well I shouldn't say to not ruin the book. It's poetic, playful, whimsical, but also quite dark as it explores themes of environmental landscapes, otherness, and parenthood. The audio was fantastic, but I strongly recommend also looking into how the book is actually written. Porter plays around with the white space of the pages, typography, and such which gives the reader a view of the emotions and scenes being described in a way I've never seen before.

juno

Arnav Shah

Nick Bicko

Wenn man in einem Buch eine Doppelseite sieht und weiß, dass man diese eigentlich skippen könnte, ohne etwas zu verpassen, ist es vermutlich kein gutes Buch. Das gab es in diesem Buch leider mehrfach - gewisse Parts der Erzählung haben nichts zur Story beigetragen und waren im Grunde nur gibberish. 

Man könnte die Story dieses Buches wohl in 5 Sätzen auserzählen und der Weg ist in dieser Geschichte das Ziel und ich weiß im Grunde auch, warum der Autor diesen Weg gewählt hat, aber dieser Weg hat für mich einfach nicht funktioniert. 210 Seiten, mit denen ich mich echt schwer getan habe.

Thomas Rock

I had no idea what was happening but I was engrossed by every word.

Imane

I wrote a whole review where I was giving away what this book is about and decided it's best to read the first few chapters and decide whether or not it's for you, in case you are reading this message and pondering whether or not you should pick up this book. I feel like it's one of those books you should go into not knowing much and then just fully embrace wherever you end up going. I loved the writing, I loved the characters (especially Mad Pete), I loved Lanny's mind, I loved how we saw him from the perspective of different people and entities, I loved the primordial spirit of the land/trickster figure of Dead Papa Toothwort, I loved the form, I loved the themes, I loved how a simple premise - a specific event happens in a very small town and breaks into the open all the ugliness and pettiness and cruelty but also the love and friendship and support of a community - was used to expose fraught relationships in English culture by means of not-so-traditional storytelling, I loved how we jumped from one perspective to the other (sometimes to observe the same scene from two points of view) to showcase the subjectivity of each character, and I loved how impossible it was to put down the book once I really got into the story. Even the minimal complaints I have about this book are, at the end of the day, too small to even bother with them. So all in all, while I do not want to hype this book too much and especially not to the crowds who are more used to traditionally-told stories, if you like a little bit of weirdness, a lot of astute observations/biting commentaries on English society and its false niceties, a cast of complex characters, and a wild card played by a spirit of the land whose chapters are an incredible and chaotic mix of snatched overheard tidbits of conversations interspliced with DPT's thoughts as it is being one with the land, I'd recommend this book.

Kieran Richards

Liv Rockwell

Not for the faint of heart. 

Interweaving human connectedness with nature, Porter tells the story of a young boy Lanny who worships what is essentially . In being saved (in encountering the nature god), Lanny must forgo his originality and becomes normal. This could be seen as Lanny's loss of innocence, or simply Porter's commentary on what it takes to fit into society's mold. 

At the first part, I wasn't sure I liked the novella. The second part definitely was my favorite, as it moved between different townspeople's thoughts. This discussed how we are all truly self-absorbed and only care about others when it effects us. We then see that Lanny saw how everyone and everything was connected. From here we move to the third part, in which the three adults in Lanny's life decide between preserving Lanny's individuality and quirky attitude or saving his life for themselves. 

All over, very beautiful. Unexpected.

Amanda Wells

Every year there are at least a couple of books on the Man Booker longlist that I just don't get. This is the opposite. This books seems almost as if it was crafted to make me go 'WOW' every other page. The feel of this book is utterly spellbinding.

I loved Elmet (Fiona Mozley), Autumn (Ali Smith) and The Buried Giant (Kazuo Ishiguro) in similar ways. I loved the specifics of the story that was told, but that seems to be just the tip of the iceberg. 

I know the longlist has only just been announced, and that I've only read a grand total of 3 of the listed books, but I'm saying it early: this better be in the shortlist at least. 

Love, love, love.

Grace Emilia Machon

Weird and wonderful but with parts that made my heart stop in dread. 
I love the way Max Porter uses words.

Andrew Sztehlo

Absolutely breathtaking. Max Porter’s first novel was almost excellent; this novel blows it out of the water. I will be thinking about this for a long time. It is one of the most beautiful books I’ve read this year and it aches with beauty and emotion and love and loss and hope. Max Porter said at a signing in St Andrews this week that he is beginning a third novel soon, and I can’t wait to read it, but part of me wonders how it can possibly top Lanny. Thank you for writing this Max. I am profoundly grateful to have had the opportunity to meet you and to read your new novel.

Renée Amani

This book made me feel everything and nothing all at once. And I'm okay with that. This book was just phenomenal. When I first picked it up at the charity shop, I didn't know what to expect. I thought it'd be some light reading, a children's book. But I was completely wrong. I took a risk and it was worth it.

Natali Topliff

I honestly don't know if I was supposed to take something away from the experience of this book, but I do know that it will weigh heavy on my heart for some time to come.

Beautiful, poetic and crushing, Lanny follows a young freespirited boy, his parents, a local artist, the village as a whole and a creature of death.

Not much more can be said, just pick it up and try it!

Jessica Nottingham

I can’t be the only one who occasionally picks books up on a whim, right? Especially lately, since I’ve been less and less up to date with new releases, I tend to just pick whatever catches my eye. So when the library had this book on their book picks for “getting lost”, I was very much into it. A story about a Green Man character, a being as old as the forest itself, who is so aptly named Dead Papa Toothwort? Oh, you’d better believe that I was invested.

As it turns out, I was right to feel that way. This story feels like going back in time, to the days when stories were told around a fire. From the very opening, Max Porter builds this atmosphere that is hard to ignore. A tiny town, full of people going about their daily lives. A being in the woods, watching. Waiting. Dissatisfied in the lack of attention to nature and whimsy that people have developed. That is, except for one little boy. One spot of bright in the dark.

Lanny’s character is hard to describe. He of course has the quintessential “little boy” personality, but he is so much more than that. He is the child that all of us were at one point, before the world tried to convince us that magic wasn’t real. Porter weaves a story, with Lanny at the center, that is full of intrigue and enchantment. Here is a boy who still sees the beauty in things. A boy who doesn’t care about fitting in, because that’s not what is important at all. I loved that his two parents were on such different spectrums about how to act towards him, because it felt like the way all of us are looked at by the world. It was gorgeously done.

Alas, I have to stop here or otherwise I run the risk of spoiling things on accident. I will say that this story definitely took a turn that I wasn’t quite expecting, but I loved it all the more for that. This is my favorite kind of folk tale. A little dark, a lot magical, and brimming with atmosphere. I truly recommend the audio book! Take some time, and get lost in this wonderful story.

Stefie 

When I first read this book, I had no clue what I was reading. It’s confusing. But it kept me curious, so I kept going. I truly enjoy the story. It has the eerie feeling and quiet. It’s weird, my kind of weird, but I didn’t like it as much as I thought I’d be. 

However, what I didn’t like is actually the format. The first part, all great. Second part, I am so confused. I didn’t know who was speaking as there’s no clear symbol to show it clearly. This is my first Porter book and I am not familiar with his style. But I don’t know if his other books are like this as well. 

All in all, a great story. I like the creepiness in it. But I just hope I’d love it more.

Lanny

Reviews