“Intelligence, originality and poetic grace…Ms. Cook reflects on the momentous change by tenderly humanising all of these larger-than-life characters. Her portrayal of Bathsheba is both more compassionate and more convincing than the usual caricature of a power-hungry seductress. Her David, too, is remarkably approachable…Again and again in this discerning novel, sin and suffering culminate in a majestic work of humility and praise.”
—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal
“Cook writes beautiful and complicated prose, befitting of the subjects she chooses…Informed by the Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition without being subject to it, here is the rare book that functions on multiple levels, inspiring new ideas and insights with each re-reading…The most powerful chapters of Lux are those spent with women…Cook plucks these hollowed-out characters from Samuel and imbues them with souls. She circles the Bible story of David and Bathsheba, plumbs its depths and breathes life into it, creating the type of mannered, academic leaning novel that the English seem to adore…But press down firmly on the cover and the words, regardless of how beautiful they are, will flow out its sides like water from a sponge.”
—Tara Cheesman, On the Seawall
“Elizabeth Cook’s visual imagination is as sharp and gorgeous as any Pre-Raphaelite painter's. Her psychological penetration is deep and compassionate. They are both unfailing as she weaves together the stories of King David and Bathsheba and of Thomas Wyatt and Ann Boleyn. If this is, in a way, a tour de force, it doesn’t read like that: the connections are organic and realistic, gripping the reader and integral to the rapid movement of the narrative.”
—John Drury, author of Music at Midnight
“Cook's quietly masterful prose builds a huge world, unsentimental, numinous and deeply moving. Longing, appetite, love, grief, regret and their consequences: Lux, Wyatt's falcon, is named for the luxury of courts and concupiscence but also the light of the desert, of song, of David's Yahweh. This novel is a joy to read.”
—Susan Hitch
“Lux emerges as an unusual and accomplished page turner. It’s ambitious, incredibly detailed…the clarity and beauty of the prose is a joy. An overwhelming sense of destiny is palpable and defining.”
—Irish Examiner
“A well-told thinker of a read.”
—Weekend Sport
“[H]ugely ambitious and very beautiful.”
—BBC Radio 4’s “Saturday Review”
“[Cook’s] account of an Old Testament repentance is a full-throated one.”
—Elizabeth Buchan, Daily Mail
“In her second novel, Elizabeth Cook has followed her own passions…to good effect. Her command of language, and of her material, makes this an extremely satisfying read.”
—Anne Goodwin
“Lux is a remarkable interweaving of one ancient king’s story and his place as redeemer within and beyond Judaism.”
—Rabbi Dr Aviva Kipen, J-Wire
Praise for Achilles
“This book is a tiny treasure…If, as they say, every generation demands its own translation of Homer, Cook brings us here a Homer for the MTV generation.”
—Slate
“Everything in this novel, except the number of pages, is larger than life, and in reading it we are returned to our own lives with a sense of larger possibility. This bright, fierce book reminds us that, however grievous, however inevitable our losses, we do not bear them alone.”
—Boston Sunday Globe
“This forceful re-creation of the life of Achilles sacrifices nothing to modernity…At the same time, this brief, intense novel is unmistakably modern in intent…Fragments of keen, almost carnal prose have the cumulative effect of a requiem.”
—The New Yorker
“[A] brilliantly conceived retelling of the plight of one of Homer's heroes, British writer Cook demonstrates the same skill that has made her poetry and examinations of Renaissance literature so wonderfully memorable. Cleaving closely to the Odyssey but embellishing her tale with sharply imagined creative flourishes, Cook navigates the rise and fall of the powerful Greek warrior Achilles…The heady brew is made even richer by Cook's brave incorporation of an episode from the life of poet John Keats in the surprising final chapter, which suggests a curious affinity between the prophetic writer and the slain hero. At 128 pages, Cook's tale is tightly woven, and this brevity makes for an extreme reading experience. The genre of retellings of classical epics will surely be reinvigorated by this slim, exceptional interpretation of the heroic fable of Achilles.” STARRED REVIEW
—Publishers Weekly
“[I]nspired…In language more chaste and essential than prose fiction normally employs, Cook points up the primal quality of Achilles' story, so that we see its tragedy—that the supremely gifted, too, must die—as utterly universal. An Achilles or a Keats, as Cook argues by means of a coda about the great young hero of Romantic poetry, comes but once in an epoch to make us grasp our immortal glory and our mortal ignominy securely enough to celebrate as well as despair.” STARRED REVIEW
—Ray Olson, Booklist
“Cook writes beautiful and complicated prose, befitting of the subjects she chooses…Informed by the Judeo-Christian spiritual tradition without being subject to it, here is the rare book that functions on multiple levels, inspiring new ideas and insights with each re-reading…The most powerful chapters of Lux are those spent with women…Cook plucks these hollowed-out characters from Samuel and imbues them with souls. She circles the Bible story of David and Bathsheba, plumbs its depths and breathes life into it, creating the type of mannered, academic leaning novel that the English seem to adore…But press down firmly on the cover and the words, regardless of how beautiful they are, will flow out its sides like water from a sponge.”
—Tara Cheesman, On the Seawall
