The Alarming Palsy of James Orr

A slim shiver of dread and paranoia, Tom Lee's superb debut novel explores the darkness that exists millimetres beneath the seemingly normal, regular world. It is a read-in-one sitting fable of considerable power and skill -- Stuart Evers
In this disquieting novel, Lee explores how briskly the pleasures that we take for granted can vanish... Lee's writing pulses with humour and an appreciation of the abject silliness of human beings... He writes with a needle, and with a short-story master's eye for structure -- Leaf Arbuthnot * Sunday Times *
Darkly comic fun... [a] compelling mystery -- Chris Power * Guardian *
Politely calamitous and deeply affecting. Tom Lee can actually do what many writers think they can do -- Cynan Jones
[It] bewitches you glacially and obliquely, moving from genteel and bracingly perceptive descriptions of suburban life to the imagining of an environment in which time, reality and ethics appear disturbingly out of joint -- Matthew Adams * National *
A lean, digestible novel. He writes with the same kind of technical acumen and easy style that made Booker darlings of Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes -- Ross McIndoe * Skinny *
This is contemporary suburban noir, which, with a wry touch and a lopsided wink to Revolutionary Road, skilfully lures you into a delicately creeping nightmare -- Ross Raisin
Lee's deft, gripping portrait of the dark side of suburbia is a masterclass in slow-build creepiness * Stylist *
A quietly brilliant novel * Metro *
Tom Lee's clipped, cold-blooded sentences form a thin mantle over the sinisterly simmering plot of this mesmerising first novel -- Ian Shine * Financial Times *
This book reads like an insidious suburban nightmare, pared down to its bare essentials. A highly controlled and expert commentary on the fickleness of our modern life -- Rabeea Saleem * Book Riot *