Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #144586 in Books
• Published on: 2002-06-20
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In Andrew Miller's third novel, Oxygen, the IMPAC-award winning author of Ingenious Pain offers an intense, claustrophobic tale of parallel lives experiencing regret and redemption.

A family reunion of sorts is underway in the summer of 1997 for Alice, a newly retired, long-widowed schoolteacher, dying of cancer at her home in the English countryside. Gathering at her side are her two sons: Alec, a myopic, indecisive translator, and the more gregarious Larry, an unemployed TV soap star whose glittering US career is about to take a nosedive into the shabby territory of porn films, so he can stave off bankruptcy and hold on to his disintegrating marriage. The counterpoint to this scenario is Laszlo Lazar, Hungarian exile and fêted playwright, whose latest work, Oxygene, Alec is translating. Lazar, who has a comfortable existence in one of the more fashionable Paris quartiers, seems to possess everything that Alec does not: critical success, a loving partner, a longstanding circle of artistic friends. Yet Lazar is tormented by memories of the 1956 uprising and a comrade he feels he betrayed. When a political splinter group asks him to undertake a mysterious mission, he seizes his chance to atone for the past.

Shifting between a quintessentially English idyll, the carousing bars of Paris, the physical and emotional aridity of California, and a Budapest of the past and present, Miller skilfully evokes his characters' stories and their common theme-the liberation of self--even if the end result is that self's destruction. He writes compassionately of the terminally ill Alice, clinging to the last vestiges of life, the last agonising breath: "Was that the last to go? Certain gestures, reflexes, a way of cocking the head or moving the hands in speech?" He reminds us that human beings have choices, even in despair, and he provides a suitably ambiguous ending to round off a wise and engrossing novel.--Catherine Taylor

Caroline Gascoigne, Sunday Times
'Miller confirms his reputation as one of our most skilful chroniclers of the heart and mind ... a deeply pleasurable read.'

Review
'A writer of astonishing gifts who peels his characters back to the quick with a language that never misses a note . . . his complex characters are unravelled with a depth and elegance that is breathtaking' (Irish Times Books of the Year )

'Confirms his reputation as one of our most skilful chroniclers of the human heart and mind . . . a thoughtful, complex and satisfying work.' (Sunday Times )

'Miller's use of imagery is always unexpected, sometimes astonishing . . . It is also impossible to put down' (Independent on Sunday )

'Miller is a writer of such astonishing prose that wherever he takes his characters they speak a rare emotional truth.' (Scotland on Sunday )

'Highly accomplished . . . Breathe in and enjoy.' (Literary Review )

'[A] beautifully written novel . . . it grabs your attention to the last page.' (Daily Express )

Customer Reviews

Haunting and marvellous
I studied literature at University a number of years back and remember being captivated by some novels' combination of strong charactersiation and beautiful prose. I would put this into that category. It made me slow down from my usual 100mph charge through novels and actually appreciate each of Miller's sentences. The imagery is used to great effect but you don't actually have to do anything other than enjoy this novel. You don't have to turn it into a labour....and if you really need to have everything neatly wrapped up, with nothing to work out for yourself and no resulatnt scope for using your imagination, then maybe you should not even be attempting serious fiction. The best book I have read for a couple of years.

Stunning
I really hope this novel wins the Booker Prize; I feel it deserves to. Andrew Miller first shot to fame with 'Ingenious Pain', which was amazing, followed by the lighter but very enjoyable 'Casanova', followed by 'Oxygen' - his best to date, though also his bleakest.

Miller is one of the few literary writers who can write very self conscious, beautifully scupltured prose embedded with many layers of meaning - but who is also very accessible and effortlessly readable. I guarantee that (unlike some more pompous literary novels) you will never get bored for a moment reading one of his books, which somehow manage the unusual feat of being both profound, yet addictive pageturners. I don't want to give the ending away...but it is a wonderfully ambiguous shock.

A brilliant novel.

A beautiful book
This a a beautifully written book, full of images and descriptions which will have you nodding with recognition.

The criticisms of the form from other customer reviews I find to be completely irrelevant, the stories may not seem to be interconnected, but they are connected through the theme of oxygen, the air that Alice and Lazlo can no longer breathe, the freedom that Lazlo gained, the wasted freedom which America has given Larry. The satisfaction in the story is not to be gained from the ending, but from the detailed sketching of characters and their relationships.