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Dartmouth Park
In this timely and explosive novel, an academic’s seemingly mundane midlife crisis takes an alarming turn after his visit to a Greek monastery.
It’s February 2019. Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian with a German wife and a troubled nineteen-year-old son, is on his way back from a conference in Norway when he has an unexpected and disturbing experience that completely alters his view of the life that he has been living and the world that surrounds him.
Believing that Inés, an attractive Spanish sociologist whom he met at the conference, can shed light on what he is feeling, he travels to Cádiz to see her. But his journey doesn’t end there. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that he appears to find unbearable? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence or is he utterly self-deluded? And if he is in denial about what he is doing, how far will he go to avoid facing the truth?
In this highly original and unsettling novel, one of the UK’s most celebrated writers portrays an ordinary man in an extraordinary dilemma, a dilemma that will push him to the very edge of annihilation and disaster.
It’s February 2019. Philip Notman, an acclaimed historian with a German wife and a troubled nineteen-year-old son, is on his way back from a conference in Norway when he has an unexpected and disturbing experience that completely alters his view of the life that he has been living and the world that surrounds him.
Believing that Inés, an attractive Spanish sociologist whom he met at the conference, can shed light on what he is feeling, he travels to Cádiz to see her. But his journey doesn’t end there. Is he thinking of leaving his wife, whom he still loves, or is he trying to change a reality that he appears to find unbearable? Is he on a quest for a simpler and more authentic existence or is he utterly self-deluded? And if he is in denial about what he is doing, how far will he go to avoid facing the truth?
In this highly original and unsettling novel, one of the UK’s most celebrated writers portrays an ordinary man in an extraordinary dilemma, a dilemma that will push him to the very edge of annihilation and disaster.
432 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 17, 2023
14 people are currently reading
277 people want to read
About the author
Rupert Thomson
34 books315 followersRupert Thomson, (born November 5, 1955) is an English writer. He is the author of thirteen critically acclaimed novels and an award-winning memoir. He has lived in many cities around the world, including Athens, Berlin, New York, Sydney, Los Angeles, Amsterdam, and Rome. In 2010, after several years in Barcelona, he moved back to London. He has contributed to the Financial Times, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, Granta, and the Independent.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
March 29, 2025
4.5, rounded down.
Thomson can usually be counted on to do the unexpected, so I was slightly disappointed that at first glance this appear to be just another cis white hetero man's midlife crisis - yawn. But as it went on, it got more intriguing (and slightly bonkers), but Thomson pulled back every time he was in danger of losing me.
I wouldn't say this is his best work (that would be The Book of Revelation, of those of his I've read!), but it certainly is thought-provoking, and the prose is up to his usual excellent standard. This was released in the UK under the title How to Make a Bomb, which is definitely more on the nose than its drab US title.
Thomson can usually be counted on to do the unexpected, so I was slightly disappointed that at first glance this appear to be just another cis white hetero man's midlife crisis - yawn. But as it went on, it got more intriguing (and slightly bonkers), but Thomson pulled back every time he was in danger of losing me.
I wouldn't say this is his best work (that would be The Book of Revelation, of those of his I've read!), but it certainly is thought-provoking, and the prose is up to his usual excellent standard. This was released in the UK under the title How to Make a Bomb, which is definitely more on the nose than its drab US title.
January 2, 2024
Another savoured read from one of my favourite authors. A master of vivid, descriptive writing enfused with captivating similes and metaphors, imbuing the sights sounds and smells of the environment. The narrator Phillip starts the novel suddenly derailed by nausea and panic whilst at a conference, then goes on a journey of self estrangement and discovery. Hypnotic, dreamlike, sensual, unsettling, funny and surprising.
June 15, 2023
There seems to be a common thread to my recent reading - city parks. I'm working on a paper on sex work, cruising, plants and Belgrade parks in Staklenac and Terezin sin, and a couple of books ago I finished delightful To Battersea Park. So when I saw this title and that it's about an academic in what appears to be an existential crisis (hello there colleague!), I couldn't resist.
The protagonist is a white, middle class cishet male, and by itself that's not much to be ashamed about (one can't really choose some of these things in real life), and his existential "nausea" (hello Sartre + obligatory Munk, though "Morning" not "Scream") is caused by the very idea of possibility, while firmly entrenched in a safe cocoon of marriage with a child. He's also angry at what the world for making his son depressed. All of which got my warning lights on. Usually, when white middle class cishet men bemoan abundance of possibilities, including the abundance of goods/services/choices within contemporary consumerist society as does the protagonist, it's not their own possibilities of choice that are the issue but other people's, most often from the so-called minority or less economically affluent groups.
And indeed, when it comes to affluency, the protagonist suffers his first bout of nausea in Bergen while on an academic conference. After some prevarication, he boards a plane and off he goes in search for his less-is-more peace, all the while complaining about the postindustrial postcapitalist state of affairs (including the Duty Free airport zone). After landing in Spain, while being transported to his Cadiz "sleek four-star hotel at the tip of the peninsula" destination he thinks:
"Maybe there was a political aspect to his nausea after all
What if he was responding to how the earth had been engulfed, suppressed, obscured?
We were surrounded by things we hadn't asked for, and didn't want
Things that upset us or damaged us"
Yes, the novel's written like this, mimicking the structure of an epic poem. Speaking of the so-called minority groups, the protagonist recalls, while having dinner in Cadiz before going to a flamenco performance (of course), a conversation he had with Klaus, a philosopher who enjoys group chemsex, at the Bergen conference. The conversation goes like this:
"There was no need for commitment
No one had any expectations
You were free
What if you want to see those people again? Philip asked
You don't, Klaus said
There are more people
He was describing rich possibilities, endless choice
Why then, Philip wondered, did his words sound so oppressive?"
The conversation ends in Klaus being ridiculed by the protagonist and a woman he's enamoured with. It's telling that the protagonist is a historian writing about the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. Those were much simpler times, or at least that's what certain people would like us to believe so we buy their argument that we're "alienated" in today's society. The return to "true nature" in this novel though means vacationing in a house in Crete (free of charge!), via Cadiz's four star hotel, while on a sabbatical. And I'm not exaggerating. The village in Crete is cast as outside of civilization for the Londoner:
"Back in the house, he thought about the way the men in Kalivaki chose to communicate
Everything was stripped back, pared down
Meaning had to be unearthed
He realized that their behaviour had a bearing on his nausea
For him, as for many others, ordinary everyday reality had become unreliable, enervating, even toxic
In Japan, the phenomenon was known as ******, or "civilization sickness"
Increasing social mobility and rampant large-scale urbanization had had a disastrous effect on human beings, both severing all contact with the natural world, which had given them a sense of perspective and also of belonging, and dismantling the extended family, which had provided them with their principal source of moral and religious instruction
We had been unmoored, cut loose
We were adrift"
This is followed by a bit on "Native American tribes" and their supposed understanding of "relatives", and a reflection on Cretan men drinking coffee:
"If he spent a small part of each day with those men, it would amount to a kind of re-education
He would be learning something that he used to know, but had been deprived of, or had neglected"
Scary stuff. After finding out his purpose in an encounter with the Orthodox Christianity, the protagonist returns to London but:
"He missed Crete
Its raw simplicity, its lawlessness
Its fragrance"
While the last line my be true at certain parts of the year (all sorts of trees and shrubs bloomed when I visited in July last year), the second one can't but roll eyes. I mean, Crete is a Greek island, and Greece is a part of the EU, it's 2023. Crete is as lawless as London's Dalston and most probably even less so.
The novel's as a portrait of a particular kind of contemporary masculinity, and, true enough, such a masculinity is grounded in individuality and misguided heroism, as the protagonist refuses to join ExtinctionRebelion but chooses to be a lone wolf. And such masculinity cannot but be related to the ideas of "pure nature" and culture as source of "evil" that corrupts the purity, leading to protagonist's bizarre beliefs about Crete, for example. And this is where the novel works really good, showing how these categories (masculinity, difference between nature and culture, purity, hierarchy, etc.) are mutually dependent, as well as ridiculousness of it all packed in the form of an epic. It's a sort of bildungsroman of a domestic terrorist. Where novel did fail, however, is the very end. The frustrated male is returned into the arms of the nuclear family, which is not a solution but the cause.
The protagonist is a white, middle class cishet male, and by itself that's not much to be ashamed about (one can't really choose some of these things in real life), and his existential "nausea" (hello Sartre + obligatory Munk, though "Morning" not "Scream") is caused by the very idea of possibility, while firmly entrenched in a safe cocoon of marriage with a child. He's also angry at what the world for making his son depressed. All of which got my warning lights on. Usually, when white middle class cishet men bemoan abundance of possibilities, including the abundance of goods/services/choices within contemporary consumerist society as does the protagonist, it's not their own possibilities of choice that are the issue but other people's, most often from the so-called minority or less economically affluent groups.
And indeed, when it comes to affluency, the protagonist suffers his first bout of nausea in Bergen while on an academic conference. After some prevarication, he boards a plane and off he goes in search for his less-is-more peace, all the while complaining about the postindustrial postcapitalist state of affairs (including the Duty Free airport zone). After landing in Spain, while being transported to his Cadiz "sleek four-star hotel at the tip of the peninsula" destination he thinks:
"Maybe there was a political aspect to his nausea after all
What if he was responding to how the earth had been engulfed, suppressed, obscured?
We were surrounded by things we hadn't asked for, and didn't want
Things that upset us or damaged us"
Yes, the novel's written like this, mimicking the structure of an epic poem. Speaking of the so-called minority groups, the protagonist recalls, while having dinner in Cadiz before going to a flamenco performance (of course), a conversation he had with Klaus, a philosopher who enjoys group chemsex, at the Bergen conference. The conversation goes like this:
"There was no need for commitment
No one had any expectations
You were free
What if you want to see those people again? Philip asked
You don't, Klaus said
There are more people
He was describing rich possibilities, endless choice
Why then, Philip wondered, did his words sound so oppressive?"
The conversation ends in Klaus being ridiculed by the protagonist and a woman he's enamoured with. It's telling that the protagonist is a historian writing about the founder of the Merovingian dynasty. Those were much simpler times, or at least that's what certain people would like us to believe so we buy their argument that we're "alienated" in today's society. The return to "true nature" in this novel though means vacationing in a house in Crete (free of charge!), via Cadiz's four star hotel, while on a sabbatical. And I'm not exaggerating. The village in Crete is cast as outside of civilization for the Londoner:
"Back in the house, he thought about the way the men in Kalivaki chose to communicate
Everything was stripped back, pared down
Meaning had to be unearthed
He realized that their behaviour had a bearing on his nausea
For him, as for many others, ordinary everyday reality had become unreliable, enervating, even toxic
In Japan, the phenomenon was known as ******, or "civilization sickness"
Increasing social mobility and rampant large-scale urbanization had had a disastrous effect on human beings, both severing all contact with the natural world, which had given them a sense of perspective and also of belonging, and dismantling the extended family, which had provided them with their principal source of moral and religious instruction
We had been unmoored, cut loose
We were adrift"
This is followed by a bit on "Native American tribes" and their supposed understanding of "relatives", and a reflection on Cretan men drinking coffee:
"If he spent a small part of each day with those men, it would amount to a kind of re-education
He would be learning something that he used to know, but had been deprived of, or had neglected"
Scary stuff. After finding out his purpose in an encounter with the Orthodox Christianity, the protagonist returns to London but:
"He missed Crete
Its raw simplicity, its lawlessness
Its fragrance"
While the last line my be true at certain parts of the year (all sorts of trees and shrubs bloomed when I visited in July last year), the second one can't but roll eyes. I mean, Crete is a Greek island, and Greece is a part of the EU, it's 2023. Crete is as lawless as London's Dalston and most probably even less so.
The novel's as a portrait of a particular kind of contemporary masculinity, and, true enough, such a masculinity is grounded in individuality and misguided heroism, as the protagonist refuses to join ExtinctionRebelion but chooses to be a lone wolf. And such masculinity cannot but be related to the ideas of "pure nature" and culture as source of "evil" that corrupts the purity, leading to protagonist's bizarre beliefs about Crete, for example. And this is where the novel works really good, showing how these categories (masculinity, difference between nature and culture, purity, hierarchy, etc.) are mutually dependent, as well as ridiculousness of it all packed in the form of an epic. It's a sort of bildungsroman of a domestic terrorist. Where novel did fail, however, is the very end. The frustrated male is returned into the arms of the nuclear family, which is not a solution but the cause.
January 11, 2024
Maybe closer to 3 than 4. The writing really carried this--incredibly inventive and really compelling descriptive language. Truly a masterwork of language.
Unfortunately, that's where the praise stops.
The main character and the story he is involved in are borderline insufferable, if not just so. Philip Notman is seriously like the worst guy you knew in your sophomore philosophy class who takes everything that happens to him as a sign from God, or the universe, or some unnamed spirituality, that he's on the right path. He's having that afterglow of his first mushroom trip that made him realize other people have feelings and the earth is sick or whatever.
The guy is out on the lam for months, considering the merits of acts of terrorism, but doesn't even have the guts to cheat on his wife whom he has abandoned. How boring and typical of the enlightened cishet white man. Real revolutionary stuff.
The writing was good though, and the first two thirds were pretty good. I'll stand on that. It's also a quick read (thank God).
Footnote to this entire review: I just started reading The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard and it seems like some minor plagiarism might have happened? Second chapter of TMS, a character gets a nausea during travel to or from Bergen and lies to their spouse about what happened. The character in TMS also mentions a holiday in Crete. Maybe coincidence, but now Dartmouth Park is rubbing me even worse.
Unfortunately, that's where the praise stops.
The main character and the story he is involved in are borderline insufferable, if not just so. Philip Notman is seriously like the worst guy you knew in your sophomore philosophy class who takes everything that happens to him as a sign from God, or the universe, or some unnamed spirituality, that he's on the right path. He's having that afterglow of his first mushroom trip that made him realize other people have feelings and the earth is sick or whatever.
The guy is out on the lam for months, considering the merits of acts of terrorism, but doesn't even have the guts to cheat on his wife whom he has abandoned. How boring and typical of the enlightened cishet white man. Real revolutionary stuff.
The writing was good though, and the first two thirds were pretty good. I'll stand on that. It's also a quick read (thank God).
Footnote to this entire review: I just started reading The Morning Star by Karl Ove Knausgaard and it seems like some minor plagiarism might have happened? Second chapter of TMS, a character gets a nausea during travel to or from Bergen and lies to their spouse about what happened. The character in TMS also mentions a holiday in Crete. Maybe coincidence, but now Dartmouth Park is rubbing me even worse.
April 25, 2024
Fascinating, compelling, thought-provoking, I found it thoroughly immersive, written beautifully.
April 7, 2024
Crisp, sharp writing, with left margins aligned and no period endings. The text is very nice to see laddered on the page like that, and an excellent way to voice the narrator’s stream-of-consciousness thoughts within a connected, unraveling storyline. The protagonist, a middle-aged historian, experiences sudden attacks of ‘civilisation sickness,’ nausea, ennui and confusion. He can’t explain it to himself or his wife and son. He goes to Spain and Crete and eventually discovers what he must do which unfolds as a surprising but plausible outcome and the writing takes on more of an urgent tone.
November 26, 2023
Copy received in exchange for a review. A pensive, lyrical exploration of a midlife crisis. I admit that the blank verse style intimidated me for at least a month, but once I took it down from the shelf and started reading, I was lost in Philip's ruminations. He considers himself afflicted by bunmeibyo (civilization sickness) and rediscovers how to be:
After that, the days began to speed up, one merging into another
The dawn skies still and blue, and then the sun clearing the mountains to the east
The sun warming the rocks
His view of time seemed to have changed
It didn't keep ticking over like a digital readout or the second hand revolving on a clock
It wasn't a measurement of anything
It was merely a space he occupied
He breathed the hours as he breathed the air
They had no power to put him under pressure
They didn't make him older
They were just there
(III, 15)
This epiphany deepens with "the parable of the tomatoes" which demonstrates the connectedness of everyone and everything. He realizes that he's missed so many opportunities by simply not noticing. So, he returns home and tries to share his revelations only to be confronted with the mundane assumptions of his family/society. Can he reach them? Or must each take their own journey? And what will happen to their relationship(s)?
After that, the days began to speed up, one merging into another
The dawn skies still and blue, and then the sun clearing the mountains to the east
The sun warming the rocks
His view of time seemed to have changed
It didn't keep ticking over like a digital readout or the second hand revolving on a clock
It wasn't a measurement of anything
It was merely a space he occupied
He breathed the hours as he breathed the air
They had no power to put him under pressure
They didn't make him older
They were just there
(III, 15)
This epiphany deepens with "the parable of the tomatoes" which demonstrates the connectedness of everyone and everything. He realizes that he's missed so many opportunities by simply not noticing. So, he returns home and tries to share his revelations only to be confronted with the mundane assumptions of his family/society. Can he reach them? Or must each take their own journey? And what will happen to their relationship(s)?
January 17, 2024
Thomson's premise here is one that would have me walking straight on by, were it any other author: white man in mid-fifties, existential crisis, leaves wife, searches for meaning overseas, delusions of grandeur. (A clue: this novel will be released in the UK this year under the title 'How To Make A Bomb'.) It isn't that Philip is wrong -- the design choices that created our modern societies are almost uniformly flawed, and something needs to change -- but he is not the truth-teller he thinks he is. Thomson is such a good writer that you almost empathise with him, even as his actions from the get go reveal him to be untrustworthy; meanwhile, the world he wanders through, often aimlessly, is vivid in its characters and details, from the weathered setts and high balconies of Cádiz to the stark landscape around Theo's house in rural Crete, not to mention the starkness of Theo's existence. Thomson adds another layer of difficulty by formatting the story in verse, like what Bernardine Evaristo calls 'fusion fiction', which actually makes it easier to read than if it were in full paragraphs and sentences. I found it compelling, shot through with one memorable scene after another, though the ending was a little frustrating and relegates the character Philip treats worst to stock status.
May 13, 2024
Great writers are like magicians. You are often amazed by their feats and left wondering how they did it. Rupert Thomson is such a writer and “Dartmouth Park” floored me. It deftly combines the existentialism of Camus’ “The Stranger” and the anti-consumerism of Palahinuk’s “Fight Club.” It is utterly unpredictable and with that, oozing with a foreboding and dread I have not experienced in recent memory. Philip Notman (brilliant) is a married historian who meets the gorgeous Ines at a conference. There meeting sets off a reaction within Philip that makes him leave his wife Anya and head to Spain to find Ines. Where this far reaching story goes from there, I will not say. Furthermore, you will not be able to predict. But if you do decide to take the journey, I most assuredly envy you the trip. And I will be making space on my already cramped bookshelf for more of Thomson’s work.
A side note. I didn’t seek out this book. It was gifted to me by my wonderful wife who apparently understands my taste better than I do.
A side note. I didn’t seek out this book. It was gifted to me by my wonderful wife who apparently understands my taste better than I do.
May 5, 2024
I’m disappointed to only give 3 stars. Normally if a book hasn’t grabbed me by page 100 I stop reading and don’t list it.
BUT….. because I’ve read other books by Rupert Thomson that I’ve really liked I persevered. Do I regret that? Not really, because I like his style and the way the book thinks.
This book in particular reminded me very much of the late Russell Hoban, here their two styles merged into one.
And of the book itself? I kinda thought it was 2 books in 1. The first book about his vision on the way to the airport and the second about his self-radicalisation. For me, unfortunately, the 2 halves added up to less than 1.
If you’ve never read anything by Rupert Thomson don’t start here, read The Insult instead.
BUT….. because I’ve read other books by Rupert Thomson that I’ve really liked I persevered. Do I regret that? Not really, because I like his style and the way the book thinks.
This book in particular reminded me very much of the late Russell Hoban, here their two styles merged into one.
And of the book itself? I kinda thought it was 2 books in 1. The first book about his vision on the way to the airport and the second about his self-radicalisation. For me, unfortunately, the 2 halves added up to less than 1.
If you’ve never read anything by Rupert Thomson don’t start here, read The Insult instead.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 7, 2024
When I first started Dartmouth Park I was immediately put off by the page layout and the punctuation
Most sentences have no end punctuation
Only obvious questions or exclamations do!
The pages are laid out with left justification only, leaving the right margin ragged
There is no indication of dialogue
No quotation marks, single or double, or not even an opening em-dash à la James Joyce
I feared that I was to embark on a long prose poem
I need not fear however as the reading was easy
The novel chronicles the protagonist's journey starting from a existential crisis
It started well but fizzled out in the last section
I only fear that Dartmouth Park's style has infected my own writing.
Most sentences have no end punctuation
Only obvious questions or exclamations do!
The pages are laid out with left justification only, leaving the right margin ragged
There is no indication of dialogue
No quotation marks, single or double, or not even an opening em-dash à la James Joyce
I feared that I was to embark on a long prose poem
I need not fear however as the reading was easy
The novel chronicles the protagonist's journey starting from a existential crisis
It started well but fizzled out in the last section
I only fear that Dartmouth Park's style has infected my own writing.
November 17, 2023
Quite engaging, and the first 3/4 of this are more like 4 stars than 3. The last quarter somehow makes everything feel... less so, which sounds crazy, given what the protagonist's plan ended up being, but I guess I liked everything about his Phildickian epiphany and its resulting confusion more than I did what he imagined the solution to be.
Up until now, I've enjoyed the first half of Thomson's literary output ('87 - '05) over anything more current, but this one felt to me like a little bit of a return to the vibes of Soft and The Insult. So overall, a fun, interesting ride, despite a little bit of an "oh it's one of *those* stories" endings.
Up until now, I've enjoyed the first half of Thomson's literary output ('87 - '05) over anything more current, but this one felt to me like a little bit of a return to the vibes of Soft and The Insult. So overall, a fun, interesting ride, despite a little bit of an "oh it's one of *those* stories" endings.
February 11, 2024
Less about the plot and more about the people he met along the way. Enjambment made for an interesting read.
Read
March 25, 2024Comfortable in the camp of "good books with disappointing endings."
April 7, 2024
It moved along quite quickly, i enjoyed the prose, nowhere near his early work....
April 22, 2024
I found this to be a slow and often thought provoking read. Lots to digest.
June 6, 2024
Dnf. Too precious
July 21, 2024
Hmmm what have I read! This book neatly captures a man’s inner monologue and journey of self discovery.
September 25, 2024
Written so so well with some really beautiful scenes, but the ending felt really quite weak
June 19, 2025
A beautifully written book! And a fascinating story. Can't recommend it highly enough.
July 3, 2025
idk i loved this novel. read it entirely in one sitting. such a psychological mind-f**k, and there were so many well done plot twists. Thomson writes such a good thriller.
July 21, 2025
whatEVERRR🥱🥱
May 3, 2024
Really liked how fast I read this, had me into the book all the way through but did not enjoy the ending
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews