From Library Journal
Though the late novelist had tried narrative verse before (in Moses, 1976), this strictly metered tale of a footloose Irish rake and his ennui-ridden offspring initially surprises but ultimately unravels. In cleverly?often ribaldly?rhymed ottava rima, Burgess (A Clockwork Orange) follows the escapades of Michael Byrne ("He loved the tuba, trumpets and trombones,/ Which smote his very scrotum with their groans") as he beds his way from post-Great War London to Nazi Germany and beyond, leaving a series of wives, lovers, children, film scores, and garish erotic paintings in his wake. The saga romps along comically a la Tom Jones for a third of its length but takes a grim, enervating turn when the narrative flashes forward to the 1990s and bogs down in the dispiriting neuroses of Byrne's twin children, Tom and Tim: one castrated, the other a priest. Though it continues to amuse in a barbed, wise-guy professorial way, Burgess's work eventually descends into pure cartoon, a linguistically fascinating but imbalanced farce.?Fred Muratori, Cornell Univ. Lib., Ithaca,
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
The prolific (over 50 books) and protean Burgess (191793), author of such amazingly varied fictions as Enderby (1967), Napoleon Symphony (1974), and A Dead Man in Deptford (1995), left this rambunctious ``novel in verse'' completed at his death. Borrowing both Byron's ottava rima and the nine-line stanza Spenser employed in The Faerie Queen (and throwing in a few sonnets for good measure), Burgess's anonymous narrator celebrates and regrets the gluttonous life indulged by his Falstaffian subject--an Irish Don Juan if there ever was one. The eponymous Michael Byrne achieves fame as artist, composer, and cocksman as he beds willing women and fathers disgruntled children, surviving political and erotic dangers in Hitler's Germany before disappearing into the Far East, and legend. The ``fruits of his insemination'' pursue their own dreams and flee their own demons (one is a priest, another author apocalyptic reunion with their Aged (and Unregenerate) Parent. Punk terrorists and Muslim fanatics bent on dishonoring Dante Alighieri also join in this word-drunk romp, which is distinguished by literally dozens of ingeniously brilliant comic rhymes: SS-men boozily strutting their stuff express ``the joy of being drunk and Aryan./Though Hitler was a teetotalitarian,'' and an enlightened defense of the maligned Albert Einstein becomes ``How the hell has his Jewishness impaired/The formula E=Mc2?'' It isn't easy to stop quoting. Surely, somewhere Byron is rolling over in his grave. Laughing. It's heartening to learn from this wonder-filled book that, right up to the end of his life, the invaluable Burgess continued to enjoy writing as few writers have ever done. This is a swan song like no other, and one of the most delightful books of the decade. --
Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
