This is a competently written novel, especially for an author aged only 26. With hindsight, Taylor has gone on to become a notable critic/cultural commentator. The novel in question here is clever (almost too much so), knowing (ditto), semi-autobiographical (I imagine), and consciously postmodern, albeit with an archetypally unreliable narrator. At the heart of Great Eastern Land are the stock themes of the overlapping nature of multiple histories and one's inescapability from the past. Although part of the novel is set in Oxford (where Taylor studied), much of it occurs in East Anglia, hence the novel's title. My major criticism of Great Eastern Land was simply how “old” the work feels; it has not stood the test of time well and the behaviors/language of the characters appear to come from a distant era, one which may have even felt anachronistic to a reader in the 1980s. Not a work that I would feel the need to revisit. 6/10.
By D. J. Taylor