Am I the only one who thinks the writing often slips? - Rated 
There is no doubt that Docx is inventive and imaginative. But I have cringed several times at his use of excessive metaphor and dripping language. Not enough to put the book down, but enough to wonder if this wonderkind has staying power. Measured against Peter Carey and Amitav Ghosh, to name only two more gifted authors, Docx falls short.
self help - Rated 
If this is only Docx's second novel, he'll be winning awards in no time.
This is an engrossing novel about families which escapes the banality that often permeates such novels. The plot follows Gabriel and Isabella Glover, thirty two year-old twins, as they come to terms with their mother's death in Russia. Gabriel is based in London while Isabella lives in New York, and the sudden loss causes both to reassess their lives and relationships.
Meanwhile, a talented Russian pianist has links to the Glovers. His life is a million miles from theirs. Docx thrillingly evokes the sleazy underbelly of the poverty-stricken in Russia, and the horrors of drug dependency, withdrawal and eking out a living in a criminal world are fascinatingly depicted.
There are so many breathtakingly potent sections in this novel. Fear, anger, loyalty, hatred and love are all seared into the text, and some sections are white-knuckle inducing. Docx captures the conflicting emotions that family evokes. And the characters are rounded and believable, they have faults like real people, and their dialogue sparkles.
The Booker should have gone to this or to Darkmans.
Honest with Me - Rated
Gabriel Glover lives in London and struggles to hold together a self help magazine he despises, basically writing most of the copy and doing the design work himself given his incompetent lazy staff. One night Gabriel receives a distressing phone call from his mother Masha who lives in St Petersburg. She presses upon him metaphysical advice and laments the demise of people's ability to inhabit themselves fully. Bothered by the worrisome sound of her voice and her bouts of coughing, he races to Russia only to find her dead in her apartment. Gabriel and his twin sister Isabella search throughout this novel to discover who their mother really was and, more pressingly, who they are themselves. Amidst their quest, their despised philandering father Nicholas must admit some secrets which both he and Masha carefully withheld from their children. Masha's illegitimate son Arkady holds the key to breaking the silence between the father and his grieving children. The pessimistic Arkady is searching to find some way to finance his musical education and wants to see if the Glover relatives who he's never met will help him. He is a gifted pianist that has seen his talent squandered in the shifting gears of Russia's transforming political system. Even more committed to Arkady's education is his friend Henry who is a teacher with an unfortunate drug habit. In the last hundred pages of this sprawling novel, the strands of these characters' stories come together to unearth some surprising revelations and a heart-breaking climax.
Docx has produced a powerful family novel teeming with rich ideas and universal themes concerning identity, loss and social/familial dislocation. Each character is explored in depth and with great sympathy. Nicholas' psychology and relationship with his young male lover who schemes to get a steady allowance from the older man is complexly drawn. Henry sees his resources dwindling in his struggle to assist Arkady and kick his drug addiction. His slow downward spiral is written in a way that feels harrowing and true. However, this portion of the story seems glued on to the larger narrative about this family's struggle to reunite and discover how they fit together. This is a difficult novel which yields many great rewards, but the story can be a bit unwieldy in its focus at times. One of Docx's greatest talents is for describing the numerous cities this novel travels through over the course of the story. St Petersburg, Paris, London and New York are all vividly evoked in rich sensual detail giving real character to the places and making them physically real. More than that, he holds up a reflection of the values and sensibility of Russia compared to the West. Docx has many intelligent and heartfelt things to say about the responsibility we have to accept ourselves fully. While Self Help isn't meant to be prescriptive, it does give you a lot to think about.
A total masterpiece - Rated
Self Help is a complex and engrossing novel.
A returned Soviet émigré, Maria Glover, is found dead in her St Petersburg flat by her son. He has flown out at short notice to answer her intriguing call of distress.
In the aftermath of Maria's passing, the Glover family secrets and stories start to come to light. The tentacles of these stories stretch from St Petersburg to London, Paris and New York as Maria's family have flown the nest and made, generally, unsuccessful and unfulfilling lives for themselves.
What makes Self Help is the level of intrigue in the stories - especially as Arkady, aided by English heroin addict Henry, tries to make contact with Maria's family. The novel is narrated from various perspectives, allowing characters to be the villain of the piece in one chapter and the focus of attention and sympathy in the next. The level of detail, too, is astounding. This creates a very real sense of place which, in four different cities, is no mean feat. By way of example, the detail we see of Gabriel's life - he is Maria's son - as he edits the Self-Help! magazine goes way beyond what is needed to carry the story along. Each of Gabe's staff gets a mention, along with their various issues and problems that make them totally unsuited to their work. And Arkady and Henry's dealings with the criminal underworld in St Petersburg ring very true indeed. The arch-baddie Leary is a comic creation of genius - his understanding of the psyche of the junkie is so true.
As the novel meanders its slow but shimmering path to conclusion, the various strands get brought together in various unpredictable ways. There is the obligatory jaw dropping moment of shock - and it really is jaw-dropping, but without being clichéd.
A couple of anachronisms apart, this is a total masterpiece. The language glows on the page, briefly, before the urge to turn the page kicks in. Top class.
An excellent angst-ridden read with which many will identify - Rated
Highly absorbing, often witty and consistently compelling stuff.
The vivid descriptive passages and well-structured character development are punctuated by suitably verbose self-analysis and brooding introspection, bringing a potboiler-like urgency to the narrative. A precise 20th century malaise with which it is not difficult to empathize hasn't been captured this well in a novel for a while. Highly recommended.
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