SOURCE: Todd, Tamsin. “Musing on the Millennium.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4974 (31 July 1998): 20.

In the following review, Todd discusses the unconventional structure of Pieces of Light, praising the novel as “strongly plotted and a pleasure to read.”

Retrospection anchors Adam Thorpe's work. His first novel, Ulverton (1992), an account of a fictional English ur-town, reconstructed 300 years of England's cultural history through a set of interlinking narratives. Still (1995), his second novel, was an exiled film director's retrospective on his life and failed career. Thorpe's talent for picking the telling detail and resonant historical voice was evident in both novels. Pieces of Light, his exhilarating third novel, re-examines two of the twentieth century's shaping forces—colonialism and war. The story centres on the protagonist, Hugh Arkwright's effort to reconcile his memories of his mother, who disappeared into the African jungle in the 1930s, with his later life in England. As in the...