Great premise for a book but didn’t quite deliver on what I was expecting. Enjoyable reading and sound characters, sublime writing. Just missing something slightly.

"A book can be a totem of the best the human spirit has to offer, but up until the moment it exists it's nothing but another gathering of hypotheticals, contracts, futures."

TW: suicidal tendancies, depression

The protagonist, an artist-turned-author with a long history of depression, embarks on a journey to find the Italian physicist he is ghost writing an autobiography for. We follow his journey as we learn of the massive debt he owes that will fall to his wife if he doesn't cover it and as he reveals a secret treatment that finally removed the 'mist' from his life.

This novel is a beautiful, raw look into how depression can become the person, along with the absolute dissection needed to scare off the mist of darkness for once and for all. The book enabled an incredible amount of character growth through a short novel, allowing the protagonist to take full accountability for his actions and how he has hurt others, as well as seek change from within.

I loved the accountability. The honest descriptions. The bleak, depressing moments, contrasted with hope, new beginnings and an underlying reality that it's never too late to change things. Whether it's chipping away at the looming debt, or repositioning the way we view life, there's hope.

Bravo.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC to review. I really wanted to get into this book but I could not.

I’d describe this book as realistic fiction. The author has done an amazing job at creating imaginary characters and situations that depict the world and society. The characters focus on themes of growing, self-discovery and confronting personal and social problems. This is a first for me by the author and one I enjoyed and would read more of their work. The book cover is eye-catching and appealing and would spark my interest if in a bookshop. Thank you very much to the author, publisher and Netgalley for this ARC.

ARC provided courtesy of Netgalley (thank you)!

“Oh, by all means – lose your mind. Just understand that you’ll come back, and be better than before.”

I loved this book and I only wish it was longer, honestly. I found it to be a nuanced and well written portrayal of depression and negotiating creative fields (and life) with it, from what I read about the author it’s drawn from experience which definitely shows through in how capably it’s navigated. This also counts for the narrators life in West Virginia in the USA – the author also has that experience! I think that lends the book so much in terms of grounding it well.

The blending of memories, life history and planned next steps all works wonders in the setting of a narrator reminiscing on a train journey to the Physicist. It slips between the three naturally and easily and I might be a little biased because that’s exactly the kind of writing style I adore.

In a way it almost felt TOO good, the hardest parts of the narrators depression felt truly desperate in a way I’ve not encountered before in other novels but I still found it too hard to put down and read it in three days. It is a complex book in terms of the characters - suitably complicated enough to feel like real people but not too complicated as to feel unrelatable or unlikeable. They have flaws and strengths and the narrators affection for his wife through it all are a delight.

The plotting of an ecological crisis and subsequent social crisis through two lenses of nostalgia (it reads better than I make it sound, promise) has a sense of urgency to it that again comes through clearly enough to be 100% totally believable as a real-world event. (If it is a real world event, that would explain why, but I couldn’t find anything when I did get curious).

Overall I really, really loved this book. It’s not my usual genre of fiction but I am SO glad I made the choice to read it.

The Red Arrow is quite unlike anything I've read before. Literary fiction can be ponderous and abstract, and this is certainly both. There are no chapters which can be off-putting to some readers. But rambling paragraphs aside, The Red Arrow is deeply perceptive about depression, about suicidal ideation and the longing to not feel 'The Mist' as the narrator refers to his depression. Alongside the hunt for the eluisve physicist, (whose story our protagonist is ghost writing), we are taken on a journey to healing through the use of psilocybin which I found deeply fascinating.

Certainly unusual, certainly slow-paced, The Red Arrow will divide opinion I'm sure, but I really enjoyed its originality and depth.

'A failed American novelist is on honeymoon in Italy, but the day of this story he's travelling from Rome to Modena by the 'frecciarossa' high-speed train (the 'red arrow' of the book's title). He's in the process of ghost-writing the life story of a famous physicist, but the physicist has disappeared - refusing to answer e-mails or phone calls. This has put our unnamed narrator in a fix, as finishing the memoir was the only way he could write off a huge advance from his publishers, but he's hoping to find the physicist at home on his family estate.

While the train rushes through Italian countryside, the narrator's thoughts wonder back over his life - through years of depression and the life-altering psychedelic drug treatment which saved him.

The Red Arrow is a difficult book to describe without giving a complete spoiler. The writing is straight forward, very American to my mind (though I'd be hard pressed to describe what exactly I mean by that), but the narrator's thoughts are circuitous, constantly circling round the big 'treatment' event without approaching it. Even so, I found it very readable.

There's a huge amount of coincidence or interconnectedness to events and characters, and a resolution which resembles the 'which came first; the chicken or the egg?' conundrum. To be honest this seems only fair and fitting as I picked this read up from Netgalley solely on the basis that one of our local buses is named the Red Arrow. What I didn't expect was the brief appearance of my grandmother's next door neighbour, D H Lawrence, but that's coincidence for you.
All in all, an intriguing book, and one I think I'll read again.

Whilst the premise of this book was incredibly interesting, I couldn't get past the writing style to fully appreciate the content covered. I thought it was an eye-opening insight into surviving depression, but the story was so slow for me. The literary style distanced me from the character, and I found passages to be too dense and descriptive that I often found myself zoning out of the story.

A very well written book focusing on the perils of depression. It vividly create a clear image of what it is like to live with depression and how it wrecks havoc. The story progression is a bit slow but the book is an eye opener, moreover it compels you to think about it. I'd absolutely recommend the book.

I found this book quite slow but liked how it betrayed the likes of depression etc. I did finish it but it didn't have me gripped like other books. A lesson as well as a story. Thank you

Easily one of the best portrayals of depression I've ever read, from the way it can wreck your life to the suicidal urges, it's terribly relatable.
However, while very well written, I can't say I particularly enjoyed this read. I thought it was rather slow, most of the action in this book is pretty mundane and it's so detail filled that it could have lost me in places. Still I don't regret reading it, it paints a vivid picture of what it's like to live with mental illness but also to come out of it. It was interesting to say the least (the exploration of the concept of time and the new psychedelic treatments in particular).
I would recommend this book to those who favour style from storyline and to anyone who wants to read something that makes them think deeply.

A literary exercise as much as a 'story', The Red Arrow is saved from being too meta-clever by the power of the subject, story and the lightness with which it delights in its meta-cleverness. Surprisingly fun and playful considering the seriousness with which it deals with its hero's depression - expect to read with a persistent sense of (intentional) deja vu. Very much recommend. 4.5 stars.

I didn't know what to expect from this book. ot was well written and had a good storyline I just couldn't rea;;y get into it, but I think that was more my fault than the books.

A devastating insight into depression, it's also a mind-expanding, exhilarating experience of the power of psychedelic therapy to transform a life. This was such a good book.

The Red Arrow” is an unconventional novel about a man who is travelling to Modena, Italy to locate an unnamed physicist in order to ghostwrite his memoir. This will, he hopes, erase the debt he owes to a publisher for a book that he failed to deliver. But the Physicist, which is how he solely refers to him, has vanished. The “Red Arrow” of the title refers to the “Frecciarossa”, a high-speed Italian train on which the narrator travels. On the train, he recounts the events that got him to this place.

The main character is likeable, and the prose is immensely readable, and there is no doubt that “The Red Arrow” is a competently written story which appealed to my love of left-field books. It is also a genuinely good exploration of depression. However, if I’m honest, by the end I was left feeling unsatisfied. The unconventional narrative tricks etc were great but the story just lacked that certain something to make it really special.

Normally I love novels like this but for some reason I couldn’t get into it. I picked it up and put it down so many times. Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.