All Quiet on the Orient Express - Magnus Mills

Well, first I have to say that this is an excellent book which haunts the reader almost from the first page. It has the same feeling of the inevitable that Mills' first book had (which IMHO is a much more rounded, better read) and the characters are very memorable. When I first started reading this book, I was put off slightly by the fact that the quotes on the front said stuff about how humourous the book was and so I was naturally assuming quite a few parallels with the other (Restraint of Beasts). The two books are similar, but I feel that this one will haunt me for a lot longer than the first. The reader very quickly builds up an understanding of the ...

This is one of the oddest books I have read but rewarding in a way I find hard to explain. The narrator finds himself increasingly drawn into a peculiar and small world of extraordinarily ordinary characters. He takes on jobs through politeness and a lack of anything better to do and finds himself, as a result, more in debt not less so to these people. For a book in which nothing seems to happen you get drawn along quite nicely. Quite what it all means I'm not really sure but it hangs around in your head in a way few other stories seem to. ...

Bus-driver from the Brixton depot, turns journalist, turns successful novelist. This is not the plot of a novel, rather Magnus Mills' life so far. His novels though are just as surprising, if not as cheery. I've only read this one, published in 2000 but have heard much about The Restraint of Beasts and can't wait to get my hands on it. Dooyoo know what it's like? In All Quiet, the nameless narrator, like Mills, appears to be able to turn his hand to anything. At the end of the season in the lake district, he puts off his motorbiking travel plans and stays on after the other campers have left, doing increasingly difficult oddjobs for the ...