Rise and Fall of Great Powers (Rachman) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
The tale begins to wobble in the second chapter, as Tooly...shows signs that she may be as zany as her name suggests.... [W]e are told that she is wearing mismatched Converse sneakers, one black and one red. She also, we learn, plays the ukulele in her spare time. So it’s going to be like that. Suddenly, in the middle of her long walk, like someone in a musical, she bursts "into a sprint.... Then she halts, "breathless and grinning" (Tooly tends to grin, and frown, and squeal), because she has a "secret." And her secret is that she has "nowhere to run, no place to hasten toward, not in this city or in the world." I’m afraid Tooly has another secret: She is annoying.
Jim Windolf - New York Times Book Review


This book is mesmerising: a thorough work-out for the head and heart that targets cognitive muscles you never knew you had. Thanks, though, to Rachman’s lightness of touch and quite considerable streaks of silliness, it feels much more like dancing than exercise.
Times (UK)
 

Some novels are such good company that you don’t want them to end; Tom Rachman knows this, and has pulled off the feat of writing one.... Rachman has written a hugely likeable, even loveable book about the people we meet and how they shape us.
Telegraph (UK)


A bookshop-lover’s book, and beautiful prose-lover’s book, and read-it-all-in-one-weekend book.
New Republic


[A] suspenseful novel that whisks readers around the world [in a]...coming-of-age story.... The novel weaves a critique of modern society through Tooly’s odyssey, with a cast of characters grappling with the mundane realities of the 21st century. The novel loses steam toward the end, but the journey is still worth taking.
Publishers Weekly


Rachman follows his breakout debut, The Imperfectionists, with a novel featuring an American named Tooly Zylberberg, who runs a bookstore in Wales. Tooly is still confused after being abducted as a child and shuttled worldwide by book-loving Russian Humphrey, sexy Sarah, and mysterious ringleader Venn. Now she's trying to find out what really happened to her.
Library Journal


[Rachman's novel] spans the last 30 years in [a ]tale of a rocky road to adulthood. Over the course of flashbacks and fast-forward escapades, Tooly gradually pieces together the jigsaw of her unconventional life.... Rachman’s kaleidoscopic second novel demonstrates that one’s family is very often made up of the people you find and who find you along the way. —Carol Haggas
Booklist


(Starred review.) [T]he haunting tale of a young woman reassessing her turbulent past.... [T]he overwhelming emotions here are loss and regret, as Tooly realizes how she was alienated from her own best instincts by a charismatic sociopath. Brilliantly structured, beautifully written and profoundly sad.
Kirkus Reviews