We love Lanny by Max Porter

Max Porter’s second book, Lanny, is a short and powerful novel that has our booksellers rhapsodising over its language, its breadth of ideas and its ability to move you to tears. Shot through with wit, lyricism and emotional insight, it more than lives up to the promise of Porter’s universally praised debut Grief is the Thing with Feathers.

Here is a collection of testimonials from booksellers who have read, and adored, Lanny.


‘I can’t stop emoting about Lanny: my love for this book is utter and complete. This book made me reflect on so many things: gossip, prejudice, family, parenthood, community, innocence, platonic love, aging, friendship, the way we inhabit place, and humans’ connection to the earth. And then there are the literary questions the book playfully raises about voice and storytelling and myth, about genre and the novelistic form, and about the ways in which we read. The scope and vision of this book are striking, and its feats of imagination are made even more impressive by its brevity. Lanny is a mind-bending piece of writing: fresh, unique, and very special.’

– Alison Huber, head book buyer


‘An exceptional novel frequently announces itself with a whisper not a bang, and Lanny, Max Porter’s follow-up to Grief is the Thing with Feathers, is one of these – its delights snuck up on me, tangled themselves around my heart and mind, and then completely bewitched me. Porter’s playfulness with language and storytelling modes is impressive. He weaves a melange of voices together to give life to an English village, its folklore and mysteries, but especially, the world of the deeply imaginative little boy who gives this book its title. Lanny is magical and strange but always grounded in very real human experiences and feelings, good and bad. It made my heart beat faster and harder. I love Lanny in ways I can’t even begin to explain here – it already feels like my book of the year.’

– Joanna Di Mattia, bookseller at Readings Carlton


‘The experience of reading Lanny is remarkable, and I’m envious of anyone pulling open the pages of this book for the first time. At times, the words swoop across the pages and curl in on themselves, as they capture snippets of conversations between the village locals (ranging from the sublime, to the ridiculous to everything in between) about young Lanny. I don’t want to give the plot away, or anything, really (the less the reader knows the better), but oh my heart: this book cracked me open. Fans of Max Porter’s Grief is the Thing with Feathers will already know his skills as a writer. His short novels are loaded, his ear for dialogue is finely tuned, and his use of British myth and legend gives this tale an otherworldly feel that is weird, surreal and sublime. I loved this tiny, poetic fable of a book and its big, dark and optimistic story.’

– Deborah Crabtree, bookseller at Readings Carlton


Reading Lanny is a wonderful experience. It’s a tricky book to talk about without giving too much away, and I think it’s the kind of fiction that is probably more enjoyable the less you know about it. What I will say is that Max Porter brings together ideas of ancient gods, art, childhood, small-town life spectatorship, nature, and so much more, in poetry and prose that is so stunning it will make you want to immediately re-read this book. This is the rare kind of novel that you should read both for its prose and for its plot.

– Ellen Cregan, marketing and events coordinator


‘The character Lanny is a precision-engineered fulcrum upon which Max Porter balances the physical and the spiritual, the mundane and the magical. In three distinct narrative parts, the lens contracts and expands to offer vastly differing perspectives on human relations with each other and with nature. All the while, Porter’s prose is endlessly generous in its poetic beauty, resulting in a lively, gripping, and wonderfully charming novel.’

– Roland Bisshop, bookseller at Readings Carlton

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Cover image for Lanny

Lanny

Max Porter

In stock at 6 shops, ships in 3-4 daysIn stock at 6 shops