SOURCE: Broughton, Trev. “Clever-Diction.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4742 (18 February 1994): 20.

In the following review, Broughton provides an unfavorable assessment of The Fermata, faulting the book for its excessive use of puns and euphemisms.

Arno Strine [in The Fermata] can stop time. Or rather, he can stop time for everyone else while he indulges his passion for interfering with women's clothing, preferably while they are frozen in the act of interfering with themselves. To do this, he has developed elaborate routines in which he stops time to plant dildos in wastepaper bins, or to write raunchy short stories for women to discover by accident. He stops time to sneak through half-open doors. He stops time to hide in laundry baskets. If he is extra careful and neat, and he always is, he can perform his secret “chronanism”, put everything back where he found it, and restart time without anyone being...