The prize-winning journalist Erik Valeur who four years ago had his breakthrough as an award-winning fiction writer with “The Seventh Child” has done it again … Apart from the highly packed and elementary tension in the book, which guarantees an excellent reading cadence and appetite, the author
clearly enjoys – and with him the reader – the persiflage even when he mocks the media’s management-journalism, the psychiatrics’ feel-good movement, the hypocrisy of power and all sorts of political nonsense in the ruling classes. It’s satire of the finest kind.
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What talent! The Danish literature blooms strange and large flowers at the moment … Grand both in construction and execution … There are many strings and many mysteries in this imaginative and fantastic novel with an extraordinary long and disciplined tension span which is not definitively resolved
until the very end. Everywhere, you feel the experienced writer who manages to maintain the artistic feel all the way through the book because of the episodes that vibrate life and feeling. The caricatures are throughout the novel so clear and sharp that you surrender yourself to their accentuation and enlargement also because they are so dense and illuminated and raised above reality, straight into the truthful insanity of poetry.
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Along the way, The Man in the Lighthouse changes time and place frequently—and refreshingly. The past leaves inescapable traces, recalling the childhood that gives life—and the story—direction and consistency.
With conspiratorial fantasy and a keen eye for what is false and hypocritical, Valeur once again exposes society’s powers-that-be and, not least of all, his own generation’s turncoats.
The new psychological contemporary novel from the prize-winning Erik Valeur is entertaining and relevant … Crisp and touching prose. Valeur can really write … This is Valeur the social critic—at his very best.
The Man In The Lighthouse is a terrific novel, which for my sake may take the prize for this year’s Danish masterpiece. A contemporary novel, a fable and thriller all in one with a lot on mind.
... He manages to create a story from the grey duck pond, which have the same magical effect as a South
American steaming jungle and even with a supernatural layer, which convinces the reader in all its simplicity. What some readers may lack in rumpus, speed, chilling suspense, blood, violence, unpredictable plot twists and surprises in this genius novel, we, who love a well-told story, will be highly compensated by the depth and wisdom which makes the heart bleed all by itself.
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We dig into the past, skeletons tumble out, and eventually everything falls into place in Valeur’s vice-like grip. Impressive, entertaining and thought-provoking!
The journalist Erik Valeur has done it again: written a book that keeps you awake at night. Following his successful debut, The Seventh Child, Valeur has once again created a novel so exciting in plot and character development that it’s impossible to put down … A gifted tale—more exciting for
readers at every turn.
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Everything flows exactly as it should. Many of the characters are humorous, scenes are poetic, and personalities are decidedly quirky. And the varied elements of social and contemporary criticism that are inserted throughout are delightfully irreconcilable.
