Sanderson’s Isle, the brand-new novel by Betty Trask Prize-winning author James Clarke, has received praise in a review by The Sunday Times.

In the review, which subscribers can read in full here, Laura Hackett writes:

“Much literary fiction of recent years has erred towards minimalism: little action, few characters, story replaced by mood, dialogue replaced by thought. Manchester-born James Clarke’s third novel, Sanderson’s Isle, is a raucous, Technicolor scream against this trend…

Clarke manages to fit about three Sally Rooneys’ worth of content into the first 150 pages with some brilliant set pieces (the acid party, cock fighting, camping among the wreckage of a plane crash, an ayahuasca ritual). If it feels gratuitous, that’s only because of the lethargic narratives we’ve become used to.”

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 is out now. Grab your copy here or, better, via your local bookshop or Bookshop.org.