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"Snowdome
may be the single most brilliant work of intellectual fiction to have
emerged from Australia in recent years" — Paul Hardacre, (Brisbane) Courier-Mail
"Cohen takes up the interconnected
preoccupations of modern life and subjects them to intense and witty
scrutiny ... the
whole novel is like a fly's eye view of urban entropy set in a cityscape
of insistent physicality and brilliantly surreal vision."
— Katharine England, Adelaide Advertiser
"Since Kafka and, later,
Thomas Pynchon, paranoia has been a vital force in the modern world,
and nowhere more so than here...Rather than imitate life in the realist
manner, Cohen has re-imagined it. Snowdome
is audacious, discontinuous, sometimes irritating, but finely, disturbingly
persuasive."— Barry Oakley, Australian's
Review of Books
"Cohen makes
the urban landscape as beautiful as a Jeffrey Smart painting. There
is a startling synergy between the natural and artificial worlds:
'He wakes to trains crashing like
waves, to the mosquito buzz of motorcycles, to the rustling of breaking
glass.' But there is an unnerving sense of menace in the glistening
horizontals and verticals. City towers are 'crucifixes' while reflections
of the moon on water are streaks of industrial mercury."— Thuy On, (Melbourne) Age
"Australian novels don't
ask the big questions.
This is one of the reasons that Bernard Cohen's Snowdome
is so pertinent to our cultural future. Cohen shows how Australians
are accepting the notion that Australian culture will happily reside,
one day, in a plastic-domed, purchasable souvenir item.
Pick it up, turn it over, shake it... and watch the fake snow descend
on all that is supposedly Australia.
If Cohen's vision is paranoid, as Castro perceptively states [of The
Blindman's Hat], then it's now time
for us to follow through and redefine paranoia. Paranoia is about
the individual taking responsibility for, and accepting sensitivity
to, all that goes on around her/him. It's a disease in psychiatric
thinking. But perhaps it's really a particular positioning which provides
a key to the present and future.
What the individual thinks and states to be the case, might indeed
be the case. Bernard Cohen's novel celebrates
two individual perceptions now and in a time to come. Personally,
I can't fault either one of them." — Nigel Krauth, Australian Book Review
"Snowdome
is among the finest fiction this country has to offer. There has never
been anything like it published in Australia. Bernard Cohen's deadpan
style is spiked with humour and wit. This novel blends a hip sensibility
with a more enduring seriousness, a kind of compact Perec. Cohen has
managed to build a mirror ball of contemporary living." — Tom Flood
"Brilliant and importantly
distinctive writing"— Brenda Walker
