From Publishers Weekly
It takes sangfroid and skill to write a contemporary love story featuring the metaphysical poetry of John Donne and the art of calligraphy, but British writer Docx, in his debut novel, carries it off with wit and sophistication. His protagonist, Jasper Jackson, is a Londoner whose current job is to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for a wealthy client. Like Donne, Jasper is also a relentless womanizer, a charming cad who lives for love affairs. When the woman of his dreams appears in his own garden, Jasper succumbs to real love for the first time and slowly begins to realize what it feels like to be the pursuer rather than the pursued. In a clever reversal of chick-lit roles, the lovely Madeleine, a travel journalist, plays the part of the rakes of yore, while Jasper pours his woes into the willing ear of his best friend. There are many contrasts here, between ancient art and contemporary manners, between ribald conversation and metaphysical elegance of expression, between the intellectual and the erotic. Docx prefaces each chapter with the sonnet Jasper is working on, and close reading reveals that the subject of each poem corresponds to Jasper's emotional state. Using sites in London, Rome and New York, he allows Jasper to fulminate about the meretricious standards of 21st-century culture (scenes in the Tate Modern are deliciously on target). Readers of conventional romantic comedy may find more to chew on here than they're expecting, but the double surprises that end the narrative are diabolically satisfying.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Two passions animate Jasper Jackson's life. The twentysomething Brit is a dedicated womanizer, unable and unwilling to ever commit, and always on the hunt. Jasper is also a talented calligrapher, hard at work these days transcribing Songs and Sonnets, by John Donne (another serial seducer), for a wealthy client. After a particularly ugly breakup with his current girlfriend, Jasper falls truly, madly, and deeply in love for the first time, with beautiful, sexy, and intelligent Madeleine, who seems to reciprocate his feelings yet is at the same time somehow elusive and evasive. The novel ends with two delicious plot twists, and Jasper, to his sorrow, learns what it's like to be the one in a relationship who loves the most. Docx's intelligent and humorous first novel succeeds beautifully on a number of levels--the writing is confident without calling attention to itself; even the most minor characters, like Jasper's grandmother (who only appears in one scene) and his best friend, William, are fully developed and probably worthy of novels of their own. Nancy Pearl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"A sly debut."


Book Description
A modern tale of sexual mores and city life, Edward Docx"s brilliant debut is a witty novel of spurned lovers, elaborately planned seduction, plotted revenge, and surprising secrets. Jasper Jackson is a rapacious heartbreaker who is greatly overdue for a reckoning. He is also a passionate, charming, sophisticated young Londoner, well versed in life"s finer enjoyments — art and wine, great food and engaging friendships — who happens to eke out his stylish existence in the improbable vocation of calligraphy. While working on a commission to transcribe the love poetry of John Donne, he glimpses an alluring woman in the courtyard outside his window. Madeleine is in every way his match — sexy, intelligent, and, above all, elusive. But his mission to seduce her marks the start of his unraveling. A contemporary comedy of manners for fans of Nick Hornby or Julian Barnes, The Calligrapher dazzles with its acute observations about truth and deceit in the eternal battle of love.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Jasper thinks that he has found the perfect life. A world-class calligrapher and a serial seducer, he is happily transcribing the immortal Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for his wealthy patron. But when a shameless infidelity catches up with him, things begin to unravel. Worse still, one afternoon the perfect woman turns up beneath his studio window and he realises that he will have to abandon everything to win her.

FROM THE CRITICS

The New York Times

There's something admirable about Docx's stab at being at once low and hoity-toity; at sexing the novel down, as it were. But he runs into a properly paradoxical quandary. We are inclined to love a good cad because privately we suspect that everything he flees -- monogamy, the gray flannel straitjacket -- is, in fact, a raw deal. — Stephen Metcalf

The Washington Post

… Docx, a literary editor and columnist for the London Express, takes just as much care with Jasper's dissolute, self-hating modern voice as he does with Donne's more archaic and eloquent one, so the juxtaposition works to great effect. He never oversells the majesty of Donne's sonnets, and as Jasper wades into deeper and deeper water with Madeleine, the often enigmatic subjects of the poems take on a fevered urgency. — Chris Lehmann

The New Yorker

Jasper Jackson, the calligrapher hero of this sly début novel, is an archetypally feckless young Englishman: bookish and witty, fond of luxury but untroubled by such bourgeois concerns as the pursuit of money. He’s also an incorrigible philanderer, a self-described “professional” in the realm of sexual conquest, who elaborately orchestrates his seductions. He is transcribing, for a wealthy client, thirty of John Donne’s “Songs and Sonnets”—poetry animated by themes of inconstancy and ambivalence—when he spies an aloof beauty outside his window. Naturally, he finds himself, for the first time, powerlessly in love. Jasper’s eventual comeuppance involves some overly clever convolutions, but the author’s ability to strike a balance between slapstick and sincerity prevents the novel from getting too cute for its own good.

Publishers Weekly

It takes sangfroid and skill to write a contemporary love story featuring the metaphysical poetry of John Donne and the art of calligraphy, but British writer Docx, in his debut novel, carries it off with wit and sophistication. His protagonist, Jasper Jackson, is a Londoner whose current job is to transcribe the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne for a wealthy client. Like Donne, Jasper is also a relentless womanizer, a charming cad who lives for love affairs. When the woman of his dreams appears in his own garden, Jasper succumbs to real love for the first time and slowly begins to realize what it feels like to be the pursuer rather than the pursued. In a clever reversal of chick-lit roles, the lovely Madeleine, a travel journalist, plays the part of the rakes of yore, while Jasper pours his woes into the willing ear of his best friend. There are many contrasts here, between ancient art and contemporary manners, between ribald conversation and metaphysical elegance of expression, between the intellectual and the erotic. Docx prefaces each chapter with the sonnet Jasper is working on, and close reading reveals that the subject of each poem corresponds to Jasper's emotional state. Using sites in London, Rome and New York, he allows Jasper to fulminate about the meretricious standards of 21st-century culture (scenes in the Tate Modern are deliciously on target). Readers of conventional romantic comedy may find more to chew on here than they're expecting, but the double surprises that end the narrative are diabolically satisfying. Foreign rights sold in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden. (Oct. 14) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

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