Table of Contents
PRAISE FOR The Portrait
The appeal of [The Portrait] lies in the intensity of its narrators growing sense of injustice as he recounts all the indignities that he has suffered over the years from a cruel critic whom he once considered a friend. He wants revenge now, but he wants it to come slowly. The Boston Globe
A smart little psychological thriller... The film versionand there ought to be onemight feature Anthony Hopkins riffing off his Hannibal Lecter role while channeling the spirit of Kathy Batess crazed fan in Misery. The New York Times
Mesmerizing... This is a novel of pitiless revenge.
The Washington Post Book World
By the end of the novel, the boundaries between art and life are crossed in ways that are weirdly haunting.
The Baltimore Sun
A fascinating work of high-minded literature written on a small canvas. Houston Chronicle
A true tour de force... initially engaging and finally utterly chilling... an extraordinary work.
Library Journal (starred review)
Pears, gracefully but mercilessly scraping layers of personalities away with a finely honed scalpel, plumbs the depths of [a] disturbing dynamic and raises all kinds of unsettling but necessary questions. The Providence Journal
Much like Robert Browning in his classic dramatic monologues, Pears presents a classic unreliable narrator, although the degree of his unreliability is left tantalizingly ambiguous.... For those who prefer the subtlety of a small canvas, where the perfidy of the human heart is revealed in shadow, Pearss portrait is an exquisite little gem.
Booklist (starred review)
Like the most potent works of art, The Portrait contains multitudes within its slender frame... the prose is as direct as a brushstroke. And when a sinister tone enters [the] narration, one can sense the raw, emotional impact that gathers like a violent storm. Richly evocative of its historical milieu, The Portrait is a study in presentation and rising drama that rewards multiple viewings. And readings. BookPage
PRAISE FOR
The Dream of Scipio
An ALA Booklist Editors Choice
Braiding together parallel plots of romance and political intrigue set in Provence during three dark eras, The Dream of Scipio is a murder mystery on the grandest scale.... [Pears] invests his complex story with piquancy, irony, and humor. There is much to ponder here, from Neoplatonic philosophy to anti-Semitism to public duty.... Eye-opening. People
Pears builds a multilayered tale of moral choice, love, danger, and loss. Like an archaeologist, he uncovers worlds beneath worlds in a few square miles of Provenal earth.
The New York Times Book Review
The Dream of Scipio is not a mystery story. But it is a mysterious book, plumbing the shifting motives and passions of its perplexed characters and tracking the startling trajectories of ideas over the course of centuries.... Pears weaves back and forth, making it easier for the reader to grasp their parallels, contrasts, and ironies. His novel is roughly in the tradition of Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose, but it has more passion and urgency than Mr. Ecos lighter, more playful work. The Dream of Scipio is complex, surprising, and thought-provoking, a dream of a novel in more senses than one.
The Wall Street Journal
Pears could not have chosen a setting richer in beauty or in historical resonance.... The Dream of Scipio is an adventure and an achievement to match An Instance of the Fingerpost.
San Francisco Chronicle
A dazzling triptych of love and ideas... Pears leaves us with a dream, not only of destruction, but of immense and unexpected heroism. Pearss finest book yet, even more successful and riveting than its predecessor... immensely readable, fast-moving, and full of wonderful juxtaposition.
The Boston Globe
Lucid and informative... audacious and sophisticated.
Los Angeles Times
Erudite and highly readable... [Pearss] fans will rejoice in The Dream of Scipio. USA Today
An entirely satisfying symphony of story and substance... ingeniously imagined. Imagine a ropemaker, turning and twisting three fibers to make one immensely strong strand. Or perhaps a hairdresser, weaving three hanks of hair into an intricate and beautiful plait. Such is the ambitious structure of Iain Pearss new novel... a book that begins as an admirable intellectual accomplishment, and becomes, in the end, a thrilling journey through history, into the human heart and soul. The Washington Post
Iain Pears is everybodys fantasy of the ultimate history teacher.... His popular mysteries, so intricately woven from the threads of the past, have given the genre more class and intellectual depth than its ever had.... This is another wildly entertaining novel.... Pears has constructed a kind of literary Rubiks Cube, spinning these stories through each other in short chapters that produce fascinating patterns and parallels.... One of the dazzling pleasures of this novel is Pearss ability to follow the bumblebee flight of an idea through the ravages of time... remarkable.... This is a novel for our time about all time. Those who ignore Iain Pears are doomed to repeat the past.
The Christian Science Monitor
[An] ambitious, heartfelt, and thought-provoking book, one that should find a home in the heart of every thinking reader.
The Oregonian
A dazzling hall of mirrors... a remarkable read, compulsive not only as a historical novel, but also as a genuine novel of ideas.
The Daily Telegraph (London)
Iain Pears is a special kind of risk takera philosophical mystery writer with an uncommon talent for popularizing the obscure and arcane, and telling a hell of a story while doing it.... People who thought Pears could not top Fingerpost are going to be surprised. He did. New York Daily News
PRAISE FOR
An Instance of the Fingerpost
A New York Times Bestseller
A New York Times Notable Book
Named One of the New York Public Librarys
Books to Remember of 1998
May well be the best historical mystery ever written.
The Boston Sunday Globe
If you liked Umberto Ecos The Name of the Rose, you should run to buy Iain Pearss lavishly erudite historical mystery.
The New York Times
Utterly mesmerizing... Iain Pears has written an impressively original and audaciously imaginative intellectual thriller.... Dont miss it. The Washington Post Book World
Fascinating... quite extraordinary... elevates the murder mystery to the category of hight art.
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Enthralling... a gripping, expert, and wholly plausible journey to a singularly fascinating time and place.
San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
Ingeniously plotted, briskly narrated, and intellectually supple... this thriller brings not merely a huge cast of characters but a whole century vividly to life. Newsweek
[A] novel that will have you sitting up all night and calling in sick the next day. Its that hard to put down.... A superior entertainment. Houston Chronicle
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