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A review by handee
Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
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.