Reviews

"If God exiists," he said, "He's a fink. Or more likelt a foot: a giant, omniscient, omnipotent Foot. Do you think that is blasphemous?"

I have tried many times now to write a short summary of this book, but I really just ... Can't. At least not in a way that will really show how good this story is. You follow a milliary psychiatrist as he battles his own demons, while trying to help as many as he can in his new job at a millitary asylum. Beyond that, it just gets ... weird.

I loved everything about this book, but a lot of people hate it and I can understand why. This book makes up a lot of its own rules. It's funny and just down right strange. However, it never pushes out of the lines it creates for itself. It's the only book I've ever read where a man could be preparing to make plans for war in one room, then leave to write a Shakespearean play for/with dogs in the next.

Content Warnings

leucocrystal's review against another edition

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4.0

What a fantastically, uniquely, darkly funny book. Short and not exactly sweet, but a very satisfying read all the same. Wonderful. Must hunt down a copy of Twinkle Twinkle Killer Kane to watch now.

findingmontauk1's review

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4.0

I can't believe how impressed and entertained I was with this book. And I never even heard of it until a few weeks ago and it's been or for almost 40 years! I had no idea where I was going to end up, which made the ending even better!

brucemcguffin's review

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1.0

According to the author this book was an attempt to fix a bad book based on a good idea that he wrote when he was young. That bad book was Twinkle, Twinkle "Killer" Kane. I was a teenager when I read the original many years, ago and I don't know if it would hold up now, but I enjoyed it then. It may have been unformed, unfinished and lacking a plot (so the author now claims), but it was funny. This book is not funny. It is excessively melodramatic, and doesn't hang together. The author should have just moved on.

jobis89's review

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5.0

"You're convinced that God is dead because there's evil in the world - then why don't you think He's alive because of the goodness in the world?"

Set in a secluded castle that is now being used by the US government as a military asylum, The Ninth Configuration tells of a facility that houses 27 officers who have recently suffered from a mental break. Have the inmates truly lost their minds, are they faking it to avoid combat, or is something else going on? Colonel Vincent Kane is a Marine Corps psychiatrist who is called in to try and help uncover the cause of these bizarre obsessions, but he has his own demons to contend with.

Okay, as a pre-warning to anyone who may be interested in reading this book, it's a bit different and quite unusual compared to most other books I've read. The start in particular is pretty confusing, but once you get into it, it becomes very addictive. It's a relatively short book at only 170-odd pages, yet somehow Blatty manages to succeed with very impressive character development in such a small number of pages. It's funny, it's thought-provoking, but I don't think it's the kind of book you can read without the need to analyse the deeper themes. If you're looking for a light read, this isn't the book for you. Similarly, if you're looking for another horror book in the vein of The Exorcist, this ain't for you!

I didn't expect to be so moved by the events of this book, given the humour and, at times, ridiculous dialogue. Yet by the end I really felt like this book would leave a lasting impression. There's discussions about God and His existence, the presence of evil and good in the world, it's a very philosophical book. However, even with the strong philosophical themes, there's still a good, strong story here, with twists and turns I wasn't expecting.

I'm not sure I ever would have read this if it wasn't suggested to me by my buddy Cam (who I also buddy-read this with), so this is another scenario where I'm thankful to bookstagram for opening me up to books I might have otherwise missed! Definitely a unique reading experience and it gets 5 stars out of 5 from me!

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