Formal Transcendence: Rob Doyle's 'Threshold'

Read the opening pages of this innovative, influential masterwork

In advance of his impassioned and provocative masterclass on prose style, we present the opening section of Rob Doyle’s novel ‘Threshold’.

In 1961 Wayne C. Booth published The Rhetoric of Fiction, arguing against the show-don’t-tell school that dominated 20th-century fiction, and demonstrating brilliantly all that’s been lost as a result. That school has if anything been even more dominant this century, and many writers and teachers seem unaware that it’s not compulsory to write that way.

Irish writer Rob Doyle has never been interested in dumping on us yet more show-don’t-tell Replicant literary fiction. He’s as far from a Replicant as exists in contemporary literature, and is therefore to be cherished. We didn’t pick his novel Threshold from recent releases or a prizelist — it was published four years ago — but simply because we rate it highly. We hope you do too.