Customer Reviews

Headless Bust: A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium

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Wow. What a wonderful book. It's the sequel to the Haunted Tea Cosy and, as well as being longer, it's funnier and the art is great. The pictures are like the ones from the HTC, but they have a hint of Japanese in them. They are coloured in grey and light blue (see cover) and lime yellow. This is a great book and any Goriphile would carry it around with them around the house (like I do)!

The following facts should be made clear immediately. There is not, in spite of the title, a single bust in this book (to say nothing of headlessness). There is not even, I might go so far as to say, much of a plot. But what there is lives in superb Gorey glory. The best way to approach this book is to consider it a sequel to Gorey's "The Haunted Tea-Cosy" (which actually did include a cosy of spectral proportions). Our heroes, Mr. Edmund Gravel and the Bahhumbug have finished saying goodbye to the last of their guests for the evening. Ah, but a creature soon comes to spirit our protagonists, "from place to place, where there is shame, also disgrace". The story uses such delightful and little heard words as "druthers" and "aubergine" while telling the lightly lamentable tales of a host of people. Each situation is privy to a little four line poem in the style of a-b-a-b. The subtitle of this book was "A Melancholy Meditation on the False Millennium" and by the book's end both the Bahhumbug and Mr. Gravel sit, drink their tea, and think about the new Millennium (looks of horror clearly plastered on their faces). This being one of Gorey's later works, we can't criticize it too severely. Mr. Gorey had a style all his own and there is a plot here, buried as it may be. If you're partial to Fellini-esque tales of woe, you will like this book. If not, best that you pick up a copy of something entirely different (like "Betsy-Tacy" or "Goodnight Moon") and leave this book to those who would enjoy it better.

For those like me who have come late to the world of Edward Gorey and yet embraced it as one worthy to be their own, purchase this book from these nice people...support one of the greatest artists and illustrators of all time.

If you're unacquainted with Gorey, don't start with this - start with Amphigorey. But if you've already got the EG bug, here's another must for the library. This sequel of sorts (in as much as anything can truly be linked to anything else by EG), is a delight that will get you snickering everytime you put marmalade on your aubergine.

Only Edward Gorey could take the word Millennium, one wrapped with so much media and adevertising slogans, and turn it into a mystery. The nameless town where Edmund Gravel and the Bahhum Bug get pulled into, right after their Christmas party from the end of The Haunted Tea-Cosy, is like every other town in Gorey's world. It has a gazebo and large houses and a bog and, well, if your reading this then you probably know. And, by the end of the book, we still don't find out what the mystic letters QRV stand for. I do hope Gorey writes another of these books. The Broken Egg Shell, An Engrossing and Erksome Easter Evening?

i am a longtime gorey fan I feel fortunate that i was able to get this newest one with the accompanying doll -- the bahambug doll. I have collected mr. gorey for 25years and eagerly await any new publication. His art is matchless and his humor fantastic.

I think that this peace of liderature is strange but different in some way. It has all sorts of different charactors and places. This is a briliant work and i would reccomend it to everyone.

Edward Gorey died in the Hyannisport Hospital on April 18, 2000 from heart failure. On April 23, 2000, Charles Osgood on "Sunday Morning" (CBS) aired a final interview with Gorey and gave a short memorial to him. Gorey final interest featured finials, and his final stuffed creation was the figbash. Gorey's first work was THE UNSTRUNG HARP (1953) and THE HEADLESS BUST (1999) appears to be his terminal one unless he has left some manuscripts for posthumous publication. Let's hope that he did. He's gone, but he is now draped with the robe immortality and on his way to take his place in the Pantheon of Literature next to Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. A fitting poem for his mausoleum would be one by Walter Hamilton: "I never had a piece of toast, Particularly long and wide, But fell upon the sanded floor, And always on the buttered side."

In this sequel to "The Haunted Tea Cozy," the Bahhum Bug returns to Edmund Gravel and takes him on another journey to ponder over the fates and destinies of others. Upon their return to Gravel's home they calmly await the millennium. After all, will another day make a difference in the lives they just saw?

If you enjoy Edward Gorey's work, you'll enjoy this. Both drawings and text have been crafted with exquisite precision and wit.