The House of Rumour

It may be the ideal holiday read for those who like to take their brains with them on vacation. - Mark Lawson, Guardian

The world of intelligence, the world of creativity, the world of the occult - all these dance round each other flirtatiously...He has the capacity to make us care about humanity...Whatever he touches on feels right, whether he has made it up or looked it up; this is a supremely intelligent book as well as a surprisingly warm one. - Roz Kaveney, Independent

I loved this book...Once the connections start to engage, it snaps into sharp focus and the structure of the whole comes plain...The artistry of it is stunning - Maya Panika

dazzling...Shifting character and prose style throughout, Arnott blurs the line between fact and fiction with daring expert precision. - Shortlist

Arnott offers a brightly coloured portrait of our times that is alternatively intimate and epic...The House of Rumour is a brilliant achievement that invites repeated readings... - James Kidd, Independent on Sunday

meticulously researched, full of skilful literary ventriloquism and the occasional pastiche (the Fleming section, for example, deftly parodies that author's pragmatic prose style).

Above all, Arnott is forgiving of humankind, of our high aspirations and our failure to meet them, of our low behaviour and our unwillingness to take responsibility for it. - James Lovegrove, Financial Times

a virtuoso blurring of fact and fantasy...Arnott is able to indulge his pitch-perfect flair for parody and pastiche...Highly entertaining and perhaps even mind-expanding, Arnott's high-class conjuring act shows that truth really is stranger than fiction. - Phil Baker, The Sunday Times

While all novelists are called upon to fictionalise reality, Jake Arnott stands out as a dark prince of confabulation....The House of Rumour is a novel that seeks to fold time and space into a series of linked situations...this novel is more than a collection of obscure biographies; it's also about timing and dislocation, and how life and history rest on what sci-fi readers may know as a "Jonbar Hinge", a point at which the future could have taken a different path...If this is that dark Prince Arnott's Jonbar Hinge, the future looks bright. - Andrew Anthony, Observer