Glow - Hardcover

A novel that wakes us up . . . enchants readers with an intricate plot, dazzles with distinct characters [and] simply thrills with a unique, distinctive writing style. . . . The book starts off fast and sharp and has the feeling of a gas pedal being slowly forced to the floor as it goes on. Shannon Reed, "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette"
What distinguishes a novel from a designer drug? Words along, in the case of Ned Beauman s third book This epically digressive saga follows Raf, a young South London raver, who stumbles on a multinational corporation s shift from mining to dissemination of a customized hallucinogen. Beauman s prose is a mixture of speed, filigreed narration and Pynchon-esque social satire [and] "Glow "burns with inventive energy, generating a dark vision but much delight. Kenneth Baker, "The San Francisco Chronicle"
Beauman s zest for everyday comedy and a well-turned sentence is as evident as ever from the first scene. . . Casual surrealism makes an early appearance, too, in the shape of a fox trotting down the spiral staircase of a double-decker bus [and] Raf is his most fully fleshed-out protagonist. . . . Although the product of Beauman s unique sensibility, GLOW also is surprisingly close to a conventional thriller. Its baroque plot is carefully constructed right down to an ambiguous resolution that doles out minimal justice while making it clear that the corrupt world order is unchanged. And the novel has a warmth, particularly in the person of good-hearted, loose-living Raf, that marks a pleasing development in the career of this wildly talented young writer. Wendy Smith, "The Washington Post"
Reads at a breakneck pace of a who-done-it potboiler albeit a virtuosic, unconventional one [with] Beauman s satirical eye for dialogue, arcane trivia and caustic witticisms. . . [He] is one of those rare novelists who can dream up intricate, incongruous plot, pepper them with his historical facts, whip in biting British humor, and just like that they become almost believable. J.C. Gabel, "The Los Angeles Times"
When critics talk about boy genius authors, they re talking about guys like Ned Beauman. . . . His latest introduces a pill-popping raver named Raf who discovers that a friend has been kidnapped by mysterious forces in a white van. It s a pulpy whodunit, but it develops into something much weirder [that] by the end you might feel as if your brain had been CrossFit training. Melissa Maerz, "Entertainment Weekly"
Antic [and] madly engaging....The main attraction again is the way Beauman seeds his byzantine plots with odd and amusing asides [that prove] the author still shy of thirty has a boundless ability to entertain. Sam Sacks, "The Wall Street Journal"
I ve never read anything quite like Ned Beauman s "Glow," though if I had to, I d say that he reminds me at moments of William Gibson and others of Irvine Welsh. As far as I can tell, "Glow" is a sophisticated literary thriller wrapped around a love story. On the evidence of this very entertaining novel, Beauman may or may not be a neuroscientist, but he s definitely a gifted stylist and storyteller. Jay McInerney
I love pretty much everything about "Glow" from the dexterity of its sentences to the acuteness of its observational eye to the mordancy of its wit to the ingenuity of its plotting and the rigor of its political and ethical intelligence but what I love most is the underlying sweetness of its belief in the importance of human connection when it comes to finding pleasure in the world. Jim Shepard
Acclaim from the United Kingdom:
A novel to restore one s faith in modern fiction a thrillingly literary book: every page offers sentences that are a pure pleasure to read, rhythmic and witty, full of resonant variation. This is the real deal: no turgid lyricism here. . . Beauman is a prodigy; he can do he can do everything a novelist needs to be able to do scene-setting, swift bits of characterisation, exposition, memorable descriptions, jokes, sex scenes, dialogue and he does it all with such style that it looks effortless. . . One percenters like Beauman are the ones who write real books; the books that remind you why you read novels in the first place. . . "Glow" is the book that will bring Beauman to a broader audience. He deserves it. It s his warmest book to date, his most straightforwardly involving. It is the work of a writer who is already, at 29, something of a master. What more can you ask for than that? "The Sunday Business Post"
"Glow"does not glow it dazzles. "The Independent"
It's exciting to witness someone mythologising London with such brains and humour, shards of reality strung into something both synthetic and magical. . . [Beauman] uses the internet and its concomitant technologies inventively rather than as token gestures of what's current. Google Maps, You Tube, facial recognition software, internet message boards and gaming become vital parts of the novel's engineering. "The Telegraph"
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I can say, unequivocably, that "Glow "may mess with your head, but is also addictively good. "The Times"
We are in the presence of a genuine talent here. . . . Beauman's great originality and skill [and] intelligent aesthetic often provide pure revitalising reading pleasure; he is playful, arresting, unnerving, opulent, rude and above all, deliciously, startingly, exuberantly fresh. "The Guardian""