Thomas Pynchon’s new novel is an 1930s noir following a private eye chasing a cheese heiress across prewar europe. The opening chapters lay out the atmosphere of this era perfectly. The repeal of Prohibition is just around the corner, Al Capone is in jail, and the rise of fascism and communism in Europe is all laid out as our main character, Hicks McTaggart, is making sense of this world as he is shanghaied into the unknown. This novel takes place in Milwaukee and Chicago before taking us across seas into prewar europe to places like Geneva, Sicily and Vienna. The transition between these places and Hicks’ home town is stark as we watch the new world unfold around him with Nazism growing and people fearing another war. Fans of Pynchon’s work will feel at home with our main character as he carries the same character traits of main characters of his past work such as Zoyd Wheeler from Vineland and Oedipa Maas from The Crying of Lot 49. These characters being regular people dragged into something that is way bigger than themselves as we watch, unaware as they are, them try to make sense of all the craziness that unfolds around them. But that doesn’t make this novel a bad entry point into Pynchon’s work. Shadow Ticket is another example of what some fans call ‘Pynchon Lite’ with its simpler plot and less daunting page count. The opening of this novel is a great setting for a classic noir tale, which this novel is but with that added element of the weird, wonderful and outright hilarious. The novel is quite dialogue heavy which is a shift away from his more dense works making it more palatable and easy to dive into for someone that isn’t familar with his prose. Overall, this is a brilliant instalment within Pynchon’s catalogue with many memorable characters, extracts and fictional songs. It has a main character that you will love to follow along on this wild journey and meet every fleeting character with a wild name and purpose in a unique and crazy world that is unmistakably Pynchon but feels familar to our global landscape.

Begins as a classic 30's crime noir dripping in prohibition-era Americana, before morphing into some kind of quasi-paranormal Eastern European espionage mystery; made possible only by Pynchon's unique and relentless writing style. Almost pushing you to the edge of utter confusion, only to then swiftly & seamlessly bring you back into the realm of the story - rinsing and repeating like a literary rollercoaster. It's a must read for anyone wanting to be gripped by an author's style as much as the story itself - a heady melange of genres and references that really should not work except in the hands of this particular writer.

I often have the sense that I’m not understanding things with Pynchon, stuff’s going over my head. This is fairly par for the course with him. It’s not opaque, the general consensus is that this is one of the easier to follow of his works, some people floating the idea that he’s running out of time so there’s an urgency to this book, he’s much more direct. There are elements that take some getting used to, stylistic choices, the heavy 30s American slang, which means you get a kick when you realise you have been following it. Starts off like a hardboiled noir story, Hicks is charged with tracking down a missing heiress. As Pynchon books do - and actually in a way that reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s 'The Passenger', also great - the plot drifts away, you’re rolling around a Europe on the brink of an era-defining catastrophe and there are all kinds of groups of people, Nazis, Soviets, British spies, all their own agendas buffeting Hicks around. Paranormal practitioners, timelines possibly splitting into multiple realities that inanimate objects (that might have souls?) may or may not be hopping between with agendas of their own. The online forum discussions over this book are already fantastic. He’s done a great job of writing a book that is of course actually about the moment we’re currently living through - I’m looking at the criminal businessman who’s obsessed with the idea that he’s a mobster kingpin, the ‘Al Capone of Cheese’. Amongst all the classic Pynchon ingredients, the comedy and the quirky characters the mad little episodes, the songs and the conspiratorial groups that have been pulling strings behind the scenes for who knows how long, there’s a real heart to this book, real sincerity. And one little passage towards the end of it, now that I re-read it, hits me like a tonne of bricks: 'What one of them should have been saying was "We're in the last minutes of a break that will seem so wonderful and peaceable and carefree. If anybody's around to remember. Still trying to keep on with it before it gets too dark. [...] Until one night, too late, you wake up into an understanding of what you should have been doing with your life all along."'

Pynchon’s newest (and potentially final) novel is a hilarious noir romp that touches on themes and settings that have followed him through his career. Equal parts funny and touching, and full of usual Pynchon hi-jinks - submarines, femme fatales, Nazis and detectives galore.

What starts as a fairly standard tale of a private eye with a taste for getting mixed up with the girlfriends of the mafioso, soon develops into a blend of political thriller, fantasy, history, conspiracy theory and…..cheese. Our detective sets out to find a missing cheese heiress, daughter no less of the Al Capone of Cheese, in a Europe starting to embrace fascism in 1932. There’s a huge cast of characters, possibly too many in a relatively short novel, including gangsters, federal agents, musicians, spies and a golem. Do expect some very funny scenes, including a trip to the cinema and an extremely ugly lamp, don’t expect a nice, tidy ending. Thanks to the publisher for an advance copy.