SOURCE: “When the Earth Moved,” in Washington Post Book World, July 10, 1994, p. 3.

In the following review, Yardley offers a positive assessment of Shear.

In the highest and most laudable sense of the term, the British novelist Tim Parks is a professional writer. In less than a decade he has published six novels and one work of nonfiction; he has also translated, from the Italian, Roberto Calasso's The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony. All of this has been done with uncommon skill and most of it has received critical praise, but with the exception of Italian Neighbors, an idiosyncratic travel book, none of it has made much of a dent on the collective consciousness of American readers.

There can be no more telling mark of Parks's professionalism than his refusal to let public apathy get him down. Many a fine writer or artist has come aground on the shores...