SOURCE: Catling, Patrick Skene. “Little Boy Lost.” Spectator 292, no. 9119 (17 May 2003): 64-5.

In the following review, Catling offers a positive assessment of No Telling, praising Thorpe for being “able to portray coherently and at length primal emotional experiences, which are recognisably authentic and universal.”

The early diaries of Adrian Mole were a witty caricature of pubescence, but pimples and sexual bewilderment are not always funny at the time. Adam Thorpe's wonderful new novel, [No Telling,] dedicated to his three children, is the real thing. He has written a sensitive, unsentimental, surprisingly not unhumorous account of the anguish of a boy's growing awareness in his 12th and 13th years in a family in acute disorder.

Everyone is said to retain subconsciously all memories from the very beginning. Dali and Jane Russell said they could remember life in the womb. But most people's retrieval of early memories is haphazard and fragmentary...