The Toronto Star: “A Description of the Blazing World is timely, profound and telling. It’s misfit fiction at its finest.”
The National Post: “an almost unrelentingly dark and disturbing tale of lost and stolen identities.”
The Winnipeg Free Press: “a lush and easily gripping narrative, a classic tale of growing up (or giving up) in a cavernous city, searching for connections in coincidence and heroic meaning in the humble everyday.”
The Malahat Review: “For all the adolescent highjinks, exuberance of language … and pure physical movement, Murphy’s novel is very much about being haunted, and what that haunting does to you on the inside and outside.”
The Coast: “Murphy is an artful storyteller, mixing humour and suspense in equal measure.”
The Telegraph-Journal: “A Description of the Blazing World is a fast-paced, postmodern romp where the laughs could easily be despaired sighs.”
Alberta Views: “This is obviously an ambitious ouline for any novelist. But Michael Murphy keeps us interested to the end because, quite simply, he is a good writer. His sentences are so well crafted they seem effortless, His stylistic tricks pull us in rather than push us away. And even though his main characters are eccentric, the author makes them believable.”
Georgia Straight: “The debut novel by Haligonian Michael Murphy comes out with both fists swinging. A tough, two-pronged tale about thwarted endings—one marital, one more generally apocalyptic—A Description of the Blazing World doesn’t waste any time getting us acquainted with its damaged heroes, or with the sweaty, disorienting metropolis (early-21st-century Toronto) that serves as its backdrop.”
Maisonneuve: “Set in Toronto during the Northeast blackout of 2003, Michael Murphy’s A Description of the Blazing World follows a man named Morgan Wells during his obsessive search for others who share his name. Meanwhile, a young boy fantasizes about his own death as he trawls the darkened city, looking for proof that the end of the world is near. Murphy navigates both storylines with tact and wit, plunging the reader into minds as dark as the unlit skyline until the two narratives collide, shining a light on the characters’ baffling compulsions.”
The Edmonton Journal: “A Description of the Blazing World is Michael Murphy’s debut novel, and what a wild ride it is. Murphy shoves the reader down the rabbit hole and develops two linked narratives, both pulsating with fevered imagination.”
Free Range Reading: “[Murphy] has a fantastic eye for quirky details that bring his world to life, and a style that is at once funny and deeply engaging.”
