Maddening, funny, playful and beautiful…Barker has once again invigorated an old form — the historical biographical novel — through electric wit and sheer bedazzlement.”
—The Washington Post
“[Barker's] prophet’s tale is peppered with ironic asides, haikus, dizzying all-caps, and transcribed sound effects to create a kind of antiquarian post-modernism, a contemporary Tristram Shandy.”
—New York Magazine
“While matters of religion generally carry an impression of weightiness, Barker deftly juggles reverence and humor. . . . An experiment in reordering time, with which Kali is traditionally associated, Barker's The Cauliflower is as multi-lobed and densely clustered as the vegetable from which it takes its name. A nutritious treat for the intellect and the funny bone.”
—Shelf Awareness, (starred review)
“Irreverent ... Beneath the jaunty surface, the novel explores important questions about the nature of religious experience.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Respectful, playful, and often entertaining—though just as often puzzling. Barker's fans will enjoy the outing, forgiving her quirks.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“[An] imaginative tour de force … [Barker] throws a literary hand grenade into the form of the historical novel as we know it … Barker seems to want to undermine the very core of the historical novel: the idea that an act of imaginative empathy can give us access to what things were like in the past … The result is typically atypical, expectedly unexpected and inexplicably good. She really is a genius.”
–Guardian
“[A] vibrant, funny, garrulous and lovely book. It is a celebration of spirituality and faith ... Perfectly balanced between clownish irreverence and hushed respect for the numinous.”
–Sunday Times
“Tristram Shandy meets magical realism … This is an extremely ambitious book, playful, maddening, overlong, thought-provoking and rich. As an investigation of faith – which is what is must surely be – that’s not a bad way to go.”
– Financial Times
“A confection . . . . Comic and elaborate . . . . A vivid panorama.”
—Times Literary Supplement
“The Cauliflower brims with rich delicacies of arcana and ephemera...Throughout Barker’s novel, the present is laid strangely over the past, forcing the reader to peer askance at the action from an angle, like a historical voyeur ... [Barker] has created a zany, frustrating, brilliant work.”
–Telegraph
“Typically audacious … These pages showcase Barker at her best: the hairpin, full-throttle flight of an audacious imagination … Intriguing, exhilarating, perplexing.”
–Observer
“One of the most excitingly and exhaustively non-linear novelists around ... She opens up a mind-set usually incomprehensible to secular westerners ...This exuberantly imaginative novel about mysticism takes flight with panache.”
–Herald
“Nicola Barker makes her own rules…In the tale of a man who utterly rejected not just conventional society but the structure of time and space itself, she has found a wonderful reflection of her own boggling talent.”
–Literary Review
“Nicola Barker is both prodigiously talented and admirably fearless … Barker describes her book as ‘truly little more than the sum of its many parts.’ It turns out to be far more than that; a freehand, jokey sort of spiritual journey, an admiration, and a parody of faith, orchestrated by Barker with an unfailing eye for the comic opportunity … Strange, febrile and utterly unique … A story packed with vitality, wit, sly charm and astonishing energy.”
–Spectator
“Here, as everywhere else in her work, this most brilliantly unhinged of British writers does whatever the hell she likes. . . . Illuminating, tiresome, joyful, exhausting and hilarious . . . Deeply researched . . . . Watching Barker’s garrulous, profound, silly and bitingly intelligent mind at play is one of the greatest and most contagious delights in modern British fiction.”
–New Statesman
08/01/2016
What turns a mere mortal into a divinity? In this reimagined life of the guru and philosopher Sri Ramakrishna (1836–86), Barker (The Yips) turns a modern lens on the past in an attempt to separate man from myth. The legend may have begun with Ramakrishna's tendency, from an early age, to fall into trances and lose consciousness. There was also his ever-present smile, an infectious laugh, and healing powers. Much of his story is presented here by Ramakrishna's devoted nephew and minder, Hriday, who describes a life of paradoxes. Disdaining money and worldly attachments, Ramakrishna nonetheless benefits from the largess of wealthy benefactors Rani Rashmoni and her son-in law, Mathur Nath Biswas, who provide him with comfortable living quarters, servants, and exquisite places of worship. Although he suffers from lifelong indigestion and can eat only the blandest foods, he adores sweets and accepts them readily. And while he shuns sensual pleasures, he agrees to a betrothal to a five-year-old girl, although marriage comes much later and is reportedly chaste. VERDICT It may help to have an interest in Indian mysticism and the teachings of Sri Ramakrishna to appreciate fully Barker's imaginative novel, but the guru's message of love, tolerance, peace, and kindness should resonate with most readers in these somewhat dark days. [See Prepub Alert, 2/21/16.]—Barbara Love, formerly with Kingston Frontenac P.L., Ont.
2016-05-17
A headily curry-scented tale, part fable and part imaginative biography, by postmodern maven Barker (In The Approaches, 2014, etc.).Devotees of Indian religious thought will know at least the name of Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th-century guru who was deeply influential in the spread of Vedanta and other expressions of modern theistic Hinduism. He is perhaps less well known as the illiterate keeper of a temple to Kali who was as devoted to its benefactor, the widow Rani, as to the goddess. Barker calls her lively reconstruction of this episode "a painstakingly constructed, slightly mischievous, and occasionally provocative/chaotic mosaic." That's about right, though the chaotic parts deserve underscoring, especially when they involve such odd turns as an anachronistic point of view delivered by a camera fitted to a certain bird, which in turn yields a couple of Python-esque moments; catch one and see, Barker counsels: "This shouldn't be too difficult because the pre-1855 Indian swift is quite silly and highly accident-prone…." Why the ploy? Kali only knows. Her name lies hidden in the very title of the book, though the actual cabbage kin has a role, too, as does the Bengali city of Kolkata, which means "field of Kali," where such a vegetable might be grown. Suspend disbelief while you're catching the bird, and suspend the ordinary expectations of plot development; still, this is no postmodern, attention-deficit-begging exercise in the manner of a Danielewski or Kristeva but instead a more straightforward if still idiosyncratic story that evokes Eleanor Catton and even William Vollmann at points. In the end, that story centers on how faith works and religious communities and traditions are formed, sometimes, it seems, accidentally as much as by design: "The Brahmini has a very controlling manner and is of strong opinions, and after only a very short acquaintance with Uncle she became convinced that Uncle was an incarnation of God." Respectful, playful, and often entertaining—though just as often puzzling. Barker's fans will enjoy the outing, forgiving her quirks.
