The Thing Is

Christopher Potter’s The Thing Is is that great rarity: a book so original that it resembles, not even slightly, any other book I’ve ever read. A book of such breadth and depth, such mystery, such lacerating beauty that I found myself putting it down occasionally because with every page I was that much closer to the end. It’s a remarkable accomplishment * Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours *
Artful and illuminating, this meditative novel is a hugely enjoyable take on the risky business of being human * Salley Vickers, author of Miss Garnet’s Angel *
Christopher Potter’s book is a post-modern cabinet of wonders, an enigmatic, compulsive wander around his remarkable head, in words wondrously streamed out of his conscious: poetic, chaotic, crazy, sublime. Spooling back to childhood and into the future, like a half-remembered dream, it speaks to faith and infinity, filling the spaces in between with the kind of acute and raw observation that comes from an uninhibited, but deeply humane mind. An often hilarious game of word association, there’s a little of Woolf and Joyce and Thomas Browne going on here - but a lot of whimsical fun too. The Thing Is is like being at the most fantastical cocktail party, and saying, or hearing, the most wonderful things * Philip Hoare, author of RISINGTIDEFALLINGSTAR *

Christopher Potter is the author of three books: The Earth Gazers: On seeing ourselves; How to Make a Human Being: A body of evidence; and You Are Here: A portable history of the universe. He works in publishing and divides his time between London and New York.

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