SOURCE: “European Unions,” in Times Literary Supplement, April 11, 1997, p. 26.

In the following review of Europa, Miller commends Parks's shrewd observations concerning European unification and his evocation of the teaching life, but concludes that the novel's “mazy, paratactic style can easily grate.”

We are presently slouching towards an election in which the issue of Europe, however little discussed, is bound to arouse bitter passions. Those of a sceptical persuasion may take comfort from this interesting if rather tiring novel, which presents the new Europe as simultaneously a tragedy and a farce.

Europa is a fevered, obsessive interior monologue by Jerry Marlowe, one of a group of foreign-language lecturers from Milan University on a coach trip to Strasbourg, where they will make representations to various subsets of the European Parliament. At issue are the lecturers’ working conditions, which are less cosy than those enjoyed by their Italian colleagues, and therefore...