Max is thrilled that people have responded so well to his work, given how much he enjoys playing around with language and form, but he baulks at the idea that books can be split into experimental and non-experimental books. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAll novels are experiments of different kinds.\u201d he insists. He thinks that experimentation should be done with the aim of engaging readers, not infuriating them and it\u2019s hard to disagree with him.
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\u201cI want to do experiments with form that get the reader further into the book and shock or trick or delight them.\u201d Max says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
![\"Max](\"https:\/\/www.booktopia.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/MaxPorter-Blog.png\")
<\/a>This, of course, brings us to Lanny<\/a><\/em>, a book that somehow does all of those things at once. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s a strange and otherworldly tale of a peculiar young boy living in an English commuter village and the mysterious supernatural entity that stalks him, with prose that often wanders (quite literally) around the page. Perhaps the closest thing you could compare it to would be George Saunders\u2019 Lincoln in the Bardo<\/a><\/em>, although even that comparison fails to capture the wondrous weirdness of it all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With Lanny<\/em>, Max Porter captures the fussiness of English village life as well as its sly malevolence, the undercurrent of resentment and mistrust that runs through it as easily as gossip as soon as anything terrible happens. The book has been hailed as a subversive take on the \u201cmissing child\u201d genre, which is true, but it is so much more than that. To Max, Lanny<\/em> is a book that is fundamentally about trust and friendship, as well as art, creativity, and freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can listen to Max Porter talk about Lanny<\/em>, language, and fiction writing with John Purcell and myself below – I guarantee that it\u2019ll be half an hour well spent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (And then go buy yourself a signed copy of Lanny<\/em>.)
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