Sanderson’s Isle

Intriguing and unsettling ... [Clarke] has a terrific gift for the uncomfortable and threatening scene as the novel cartwheels its way to a conclusion both spectacular and sordid -- Alex Clark * Times Literary Supplement *
Off-kilter, eerie, defiantly awkward: there's little else like it right now -- Anthony Cummins * Daily Mail *
Freewheeling, vivid, and intensely imagined, Sanderson's Isle creates a portrait of a nation - but what a portrait is offered up here by James Clarke, and what a nation... although set 50 years and more ago, Sanderson's Isle has a decidedly contemporary flavour: it is a letter of love to another England, one that has long been marginalised, brutalised and effectively silenced * Irish Times *
Much literary fiction of recent years has erred towards minimalism: little action, few characters, story replaced by mood, dialogue replaced by thought. Manchester-born James Clarke's third novel, Sanderson's Isle, is a raucous, Technicolor scream against this trend ... If it feels gratuitous, that's only because of the lethargic narratives we've become used to * Sunday Times *
Clarke is particularly good at the landscapes that are one of the main pleasures of the narrative, from scraggy east London to the vividness of the Lake District -- Toby Litt * Guardian *
Set at the end of the 1960s, with the schism between straight society and the substratum of psychedelic dropouts making for some uneasy culture clashing, Clarke's pacing is shrewd and cinematic, his characters vivid and beguiling ... depicts the crumbling end of a hazy decade vividly * Buzz Magazine *
Psychedelic 1960s London, TV personalities, counterculture in the Lake District, a lost child! Wasn't I always going to love this book? And what a magnificent experience it is in its rendering of isolation and belonging, its precise evocation of place and time -- Wendy Erskine
'A feisty, subversive countervision of England's lost futures and buried longings' -- Rob Doyle
What a narrator. How Speake speaks. How he bends your ear, and your heart. Sanderson's Isle sometimes reads like a lost John Braine or David Storey novel. There's even a touch of Ted Lewis in its elemental fatalism. It's that good -- Tom Benn, author of Oxblood
Gorgeous, luxurious language propels a motley crew of characters as they beg, borrow, beat and maneuver their ways up and down the country, through TV shows, derelict stations, weird communes, lockhouses and forests. Extraordinarily mapped and cinematic in its sense of place, character and time through a powerful narrative voice, this is a portrait of riotous, joyful, mystical, horrible and high little Englanders that I loved. -- Rachael Allen, author of Kingdomland
Sanderson's Isle is a hugely enjoyable sex and drug fuelled human drama, set against the gritty backdrops of 1960's London and the Lake District. Clarke's vivid writing brings his characters fully to life, each one grappling in their own way with the social turbulence at the dawn of the space age. A powerful and deeply engaging read -- Lee Schofield, author of Wild Fell
[An] engaging, inventive literary noir ... full of neat twists and potent writing * Independent *
Praise for James Clarke * : *
His prose is generous and electrifying, unjudgemental and assured. A brilliant new talent * Colin Barrett *
A magic portrayal of life in the peripheries * Amy Liptrot *
Clarke writes with relish ... a ferocious portrait of a time and place -- M. John Harrison * Guardian *