Sanderson’s Isle, the forthcoming novel by Betty Trask Prize-winning author James Clarke, has been reviewed by The TLS.

In the review, entitled ‘Slouching Sixties: Acid, Spam and bad wine during England’s era of upheaval’ and which subscribers can read in full here, Alex Clark praises James’s “terrific gift for the uncomfortable and threatening scene” and adds that “the novel cartwheels its way to a conclusion both spectacular and sordid”.

James’s third novel after The Litten Path and Hollow in the Land, Sanderson’s Isle follows one man’s journey through swinging London and the Lake District in the psychedelic 1960s.

Young, troubled factotum Thomas Speake rolls into a grimy 1960s London to search for his estranged father. Instead, he finds a surrogate – the eccentric, drug-addled TV presenter Joseph Sanderson, who covers Britain’s shifting demographics in its most transitional decade.

When a member of Sanderson’s entourage asks Speake for help finding her missing stepdaughter, last seen in a mysterious commune in the Lake District, the pair venture into Cumbria’s brutal landscape. Will Speake find the purpose he’s desperately seeking, or will things end with the violence that pursues him?

Sanderson’s Isle will be released in hardback in the UK on 13th July 2023. Pre-order your copy here now.