This book is brave, brutal, beautiful and brilliant.  The author's imagination soars and sweeps, creating a world where anything can happen.  This is 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' and 'Through the Looking Glass and what Alice Found There' for adults, academics, adolescents and adolescent academics.  

From his home in Mrs Schrodinger's Castle on Tufnell Park Road, Q goes in search of his missing father.  He will enter fantastic realms and be confronted by a giant invertebrate mollusc, a Knight with a George Formby mask, several disembodied heads of Stephen Hawking, giant jelly babies, and Deuteronomy Smythe, a frayed, extravagantly hirsute scarecrow.

A work of pure literary genius.

A fantastical thing, set in a cabalistically weird gothic London wherein Q, an artist, wanders strange-scapes and bizarre cabarets, before the novel plunges into an unhinged, psychedelic underground odyssey.  Written and structured like poetry, with resonances of Mervyn Peake and Stanislav Lem, and full of arcane fine art allegory, 'Tyro' is a dense, brain-frazzling, and ultimately, rewarding read.  Unique.

‘Tyro’ by Laurie Evan Owen shows an amazing repository of visual experience, translated into evocative words which entwine poetry and art. Dark and lonely, poignant, in places self-destructive, with brilliantly morphed characters displaying both vengeance and vulnerability.  The fluidity of Owen’s design beckons the reader out of their comfort zone, giving his words space to erupt and assert themselves. The narrative is a blend of beguiling honesty and simplicity, with sections delivered in such a complex form that the mind is kept ever active.  The juxtaposition of emotions, tension, extremes of feeling, darkness and light and biomorphic description is raw and risk laden.  Not an ‘easy read’, but a brilliant piece of writing with remarkable intensity.  A compelling journey.

‘Tyro’ defies pigeon-holing. It is a densely woven verse novel with prose interludes; a singular reading experience, by turns film noir, nightmareish and surreal, with visceral sensory detail, rich language and vivid metaphor. It's a story about art forgery in a world where anything can happen.

The second novel by Laurie Evan Owen confirms that he is not just a one hit wonder. His second novel ‘Tyro’ also proves that he is a very fine wordsmith. He spins abstract form with concise moments in art, art history, music, and literature. His style is sometimes poetic and at other times, when it is needed, factual: cut and dried.  The main protagonist, a young man named Q, takes the reader to the salaciousness of Soho, the esteemed structures of the Schools of the Royal Academy of Arts, and into a netherworld of different psychological, ethereal, and mystical realms.  All of these are juxtaposed with the gritty background of Tyro’s true existence.  Lovers of all art forms will find nourishment in ‘Tyro’.

This is a world of strangenesses, set in a shadowy, nightmare atmosphere with a flavour of Grimm and whiffs of Gormenghast, laced with playfulness, unexpected humour and, eventually, hope. Owen’s vivid, haunting writing takes you on a journey unlike any other, to a land you won’t forget.

This is a bold, original and most ingenious novel. It is certainly like no other in its perplexing insights, its exhilarating linguistics and its overarching haunting structure.

I originally downloaded this title via NetGalley. I invariably prefer real ink on pulped fibrous matter, but with this book, preference quickly morphed into need. The ebook presentation was formatted just enough to evince the presence of visually stylized poetiprose of orgasmic serenations, but could only whimper and mutter from its digital chains. So I shelved the ones and zeroes and waited with virtual breath bated for my very non-virtual copy to traverse a very wet ocean. The cardboard packaging had hardly settled in the recycle bin before I had confirmed my earlier suspicions... Succulent composition of a twisted tale, woven inkily across the page, styled, crafted. friggin. awesome.

The novel 'Kinch is a rich tapestry of left field poetic prose.  Unlike most novels there are no chapters but the narrative is organised into 'tabs' - each tab being no more than a few pages in length.  This sets the tone for a series of vignettes that are closely woven together to create the larger narrative.  I can best describe this wonderful book as elastic: it stretches out with tension only to snap back, almost to its original position, where we can relax for a short moment before the elastic pulls us with it again.  Laurie Evan Owen's writing pierces through our intellect and awakens our sleeping emotions.