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bub_9's review
5.0
This was such a marvelous work that, despite its length, I genuinely finished it in one very long day. It's very monumental, and I am sure I missed myriad references (it reads like a personal tour of the 20th century and all its associated literary, social, and moral detours). It is also irrepressibly comical, impressively encyclopedic, and translucently textured.
From that first sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me", we know we're in for a ride, and while it is mildly slow going at first, the structure is both all-encompassing and entertaining, and the writing is just bitingly funny at times. Standout passages include the dealings with James Joyce. They're so funny, you can almost see them happening!
Anyway, not a generalist recommendation by any means, but certainly the work for which Burgess should be remembered, heralded, and celebrated, not the other one.
From that first sentence: "It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me", we know we're in for a ride, and while it is mildly slow going at first, the structure is both all-encompassing and entertaining, and the writing is just bitingly funny at times. Standout passages include the dealings with James Joyce. They're so funny, you can almost see them happening!
Anyway, not a generalist recommendation by any means, but certainly the work for which Burgess should be remembered, heralded, and celebrated, not the other one.
handee's review
5.0
I love this book. I first read it when I was about 13 and to be honest, I think I missed more than half of what was going on, but loved it as a massively intelligent ripping yarn.
The themes (good, evil, homosexuality, Catholicism, guilt, sex, family, race...) are all immense, the wordplay is over the top, and it tries very very hard to be highbrow and intellectual. The reason for this is that it's a book written by a fictional novelist, and that narrator is an unreliable, self-important dick who made his money writing popular fiction but now wants to go out with a huge and important Great Book. So yes, on one level it's an intellectual book, and a serious book, tackling big themes. But it's also a very very funny book, with a racing plot and wonderful, unreliable characters.
The themes (good, evil, homosexuality, Catholicism, guilt, sex, family, race...) are all immense, the wordplay is over the top, and it tries very very hard to be highbrow and intellectual. The reason for this is that it's a book written by a fictional novelist, and that narrator is an unreliable, self-important dick who made his money writing popular fiction but now wants to go out with a huge and important Great Book. So yes, on one level it's an intellectual book, and a serious book, tackling big themes. But it's also a very very funny book, with a racing plot and wonderful, unreliable characters.
nkmeyers's review
4.0
i have recommended this book several times since reading it. There's plenty of the world here and a lot of history too, but most of all there's a lot about human nature and the way time passes and the way we look at fate and morality.
expendablemudge's review
5.0
One of my nearest and dearest sent me her old mass-market copy years ago in one of her purging moods. And, in a deeply unusual act, I've read it twice!
I see lots of breakdowns of this story's alleged core, the Problem of Evil that besets monotheistic religions. In my own opinion, Burgess's point was less simple, as the Problem of Evil is easily resolved (you're wrong, there is no gawd so there is no problem): How, when a man is inextricably linked to another, "superior" or "better" man in the public's awareness, does one contextualize the richness of either's soul in simple material terms?
...you know, come to think of it, I can't figure out a non-spoilery way to review the book...one can't explain the power dynamic that undergirds every single decision and shapes every attitude in the men's long, untangential involvement without being either coy or obscurantist. So what can one do to discuss it? I believe my enduring puzzlement at the impossibility of writing a satisfying review has been puzzled out.
I see lots of breakdowns of this story's alleged core, the Problem of Evil that besets monotheistic religions. In my own opinion, Burgess's point was less simple, as the Problem of Evil is easily resolved (you're wrong, there is no gawd so there is no problem): How, when a man is inextricably linked to another, "superior" or "better" man in the public's awareness, does one contextualize the richness of either's soul in simple material terms?
...you know, come to think of it, I can't figure out a non-spoilery way to review the book...one can't explain the power dynamic that undergirds every single decision and shapes every attitude in the men's long, untangential involvement without being either coy or obscurantist. So what can one do to discuss it? I believe my enduring puzzlement at the impossibility of writing a satisfying review has been puzzled out.
badnruin's review
5.0
Enormous book, enormous fun...my first Burgess ever and an absolute thumper. All the big stuff, art, history, religion, sex, family - by someone who has the aptitude and knowledge to make literary gags which are actually funny and writes characters who aren't just ciphers for shallow beliefs.
Like a literary "Zelig" Ken Toomey rubs shoulders with a mixture of real world people (Joyce, Madox Ford, Hesse) and fictionalised versions of composite historical figures which are a lot of fun to try and guess.
Recommended without hesitation.
Like a literary "Zelig" Ken Toomey rubs shoulders with a mixture of real world people (Joyce, Madox Ford, Hesse) and fictionalised versions of composite historical figures which are a lot of fun to try and guess.
Recommended without hesitation.
onerodeahorse's review
4.0
My second dive into Burgess after reading A Clockwork Orange years ago - and I think this is the better book. A long, bitingly satirical novel, the action follows the life of gay British novelist Kenneth Toomey and his on-again-off-again friendship with Carlo Campanati, who eventually rises to be Pope. Through the life of Toomey, Burgess tackles religious hypocrisy, religious power and comfort, Nazism, cults, the "colonial" experience, the birth of Hollywood and more. Toomey is a great narrator: a figure by turns pompous and obnoxious, then sympathetic and pitiful. The moral core of the novel is the problem of evil, free will and the soul; but this is all depicted in a book that sometimes feels picaresque and at others like Burgess is just making fun of various other writers. It's a long, complex book, but I had great fun with it.
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