The Invisible Mile

Bruising, beautiful and ultimately transcendent, there's a perfect thought on sport, humanity or endurance on just about every pageMarkus Zuzak, author of The Book Thief

I thought it was absorbing, and on many levels. It's a book about violence, youth, mythology, history, guilt and love - all set to the agonising rhythm of an inhuman bike race. Some achievement! Fictionalised accounts of sporting events don't always work, but this has the same feeling of total immersion as I remember feeling when I read David Peace's The Damned UnitedNed Boulting, cycling broadcaster and author

Armchair Olympians who pine for some purer, pre-doping epoch of competitive sports might resist this gorgeous bummer of a period novel, narrated by a cyclist from New Zealand who ingests cocaine, ephedrine and little white booster pills in between sprints ... Coventry’s brooding narrative, in varying parts philosophical action-adventure, travelogue, family drama, war chronicle and psychological puzzler, is suffused with the ever-querying perspective of its haunted central character ... sumptuous language.The New York Times