Customer Reviews

Honey for the Bears

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It is by chance that I read this book. And I don't regret it. I loved Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, and, naturally, I wanted to read more. After looking over the reviews of The Doctor is Sick ,The Complete Mr. Enderby, and The Wanting Seed, I decided I'd look for one of those. I went to the local bookstore, and sadly (or so I thought at the time) they only had one copy of Honey for the Bears, about 7 copies of A Clockwork Orange and a couple of works he did on Shakespeare. I read the summary for Honey for the Bears, and I was uninterested. However, for lack of reading material, I bought it.

It was excellent. Burgess is really talented. Unlike so many other books, this one never gets boring, not even for a second. Taking a journey of self exploration with Paul could not possibly be more entertaining, funny, exciting or meaningful than Burgess makes it. You'll enjoy this book if you like a well constructed plot and interesting story line. This was not in any way Russian babble not worth reading unless Russian yourself. (I'm not Russian, never have been to Russia, and don't know any of the Russian language. I will go even furthur to say that you most certainly don't have to have a great interest in Russia to enjoy this book!) At the risk of sounding cliche, this is just one of those books that entertains you the whole way through.

It's not complete candy though: Burgess used Russian throughout this book, making it a little diffult to understand at times. I had to reread a few parts, but it wasn't a chore at all, and surprisingly, did not bother me. Everything comes together at the end, although is not always what you expect. Delightful. I'm surprised this wasn't made into a movie.

Anthony Burgess' "Honey for the Bears," is a fast paced farcical satire set in Cold War period Soviet Russia. Following an antiques dealer and his wife as the two attempt to sell cheep dresses on the black market as a favor to a friend.

Sexual morays and British stereo type stuffiness are thrown out the window as the two find themselves trapped in the Soviet Union with the police on Paul Hussey's trail. On the boat ride over his American wife, Belinda, becomes sick and finds herself hospitalized for a terrible rash.

"Honey for the Bears" satirizes the secret capitalist desires of the Soviet people with a schizophrenic jump between their urges for Western pleasures and at the same time a contempt for the capitalist pigs that cannot even take care of their own people.

Sharp, witty and insightful, Burgess again succeeds in bringing together a dark twisted world that strongly resembles our own. As always, Burgess' mastery of linguistics shines through as he plays games with language and dialects: thus giving his characters a sense of reality.

It is true that this book is underappreciated compared to the other great books of the author like Enderby and A ClockWork Orange nonetheless it's a great piece of fiction.No other book has given us a better description about the Soviet union or it's people.Our hero paul is a guy to be admired and pitied all through the novel.The book is funny,touching and fun to read and remember that the winter has come with it's long dark nights if u dont know what I mean read the story and u will find out.

This is by far the best book I've read by Mr. Burgess. It's excellent all the way through--it just doesn't stop. You can tell he thought it out well. Everything he says, he says in a way that is very, very entertaining and funny. It also has a hilarious plot and some great characters. I told my friends about this book, but, being fifteen years old, none of them will read it. So now I'm recommending this to everyone who reads this. This is a great work of fiction and it will please anyone willing to open up their minds for a novel.

Were I more of an academic, I would consider that at this point I am starting to get a picture of who Anthony Burgess was and the over-arching themes of his work were (Russia, linguistics, homosexuality, James Joyce, etc). Any casual reader who is only familiar with his work through the rightly famous A Clockwork Orange (Norton Critical Editions) would be aware of Burgess's Russo-phile ways. This book is able to use the Russia of the sixties to show the absurdities that arise in both the communist east and the capitalist west. This book is a wonderful social commentary that is strongly rooted in its time and social reality, which must be why it has lingered on the back-list though still in print because of the author's other, more popular work.

That it has lingered is surprising, since it is more than just a political and historical document. It is a first-rate farce. It stars Paul Hussey, a member of the bourgeois, shop-owning striving English middle class. His friend [and sometimes lover] has passed, leaving a widow. The friend had a history of selling western clothes on the Soviet black market, and Paul is trying to follow through one last time to bring home some profit for his friend's widow and have a little holiday himself. Needless to say, the trip does not turn out as planned, bit to run through all the fun twists and turns would ruin the fun and be a third-rate narrative compared to what Burgess is able spin.

What surprised me was researching the book and finding out that it was not made into a movie that I was able to find. This would have been the perfect vehicle for a middle-age Michael Cain. Sadly, its moment has passed, as the socio-political surroundings that made this novel possible are now alien to most.

I didn't want to read this book. It was attached to a copy of "A Clockwork Orange" and I figured I might as well. The whole time, I felt both compelled and repelled to go on. However, I loved it more than "A clockwork Orange," and am currently trying to find out more about it. Burgess uses an interesting plot that puts full emphasis on causality and contains many twists and turns that were comical and intriguing. I found myself alternately loving and hating Paul, the main character. The thing that I love about it the most is that what appears is a simple plot is really a statement of burgess's personal resentment for the state. If you're a political kind of person, or you want to learn, this is a great, insightful book.

Not Burgess's best work. My favorite of his is actually On Going to Bed which is his natural history of beds in art and literature. This one...well...I enjoyed the vocabulary and his scene settings (follows through on poetic images of lost teeth in a number of well crafted passages), his references to Tolstoy and other masters of Russian lit., and his dark playfulness. It wasn't intense enough to rival Clockwork Orange and wasn't terse and clearly written enough to rival someone like, say Ian McEwan.

Not one of Burgess' best, but I haven't visited Russia. It's worth reading for the Burgessian descriptions of Russian Red Tape and the suitcase of contraband size 42 housedresses he and his wife drag from one increasingly squalid temporary domicile to another