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Editorial Reviews
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
The late Anthony Burgess, a man of many talents and many books, did not leave quietly. His last work is this novel in ottava rima, frankly descended from Don Juan. Where Byron's Donny Johnny was a hapless wanderer through a corrupt and hypocritical society, Burgess's Byrne is "a lecherous defective dreamer" resembling someone in Homer called Margites. "Him the gods / Had not made skilled in craft or good in Greek. / He failed in every art." Byrne is the artist as predatory parasite. His musical compositions are hissed. His painting exhibition is closed down by the police ("The gallery was full of ladies fainting"). His reliable area of success is the bedroom--preferably one belonging to a rich widow with an itch to support the arts, although "to give Byrne his due, he was a maker, / A natural father far more than a wencher." Even his versifying biographer may be one of his scattered, multiracial offspring. Byrne is last seen in Marrakesh, on the run from a bigamy charge, discredited for cooperation with the Nazis, introducing "'My boys. / I prefer women, but these make less noise.'" The novel's second half concerns some of Byrne's offspring and their ludicrous attempt to rehabilitate the paternal reputation. It is as learned, witty, and wildly rhymed as the first half, and bloodies sacred cows with similar energy. If Burgess's satire has a single target, it is those excesses of avant-garde modernism that have led to what he considered dead ends. Byrne sees his proposed biography as "a cautionary tale." It is, but a vastly amusing, sparkling, stimulating variation on that dreary genre. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
The Atlantic Monthly, Phoebe-Lou Adams
The late Anthony Burgess, a man of many talents and many books, did not leave quietly. His last work is this novel in ottava rima, frankly descended from Don Juan. Where Byron's Donny Johnny was a hapless wanderer through a corrupt and hypocritical society, Burgess's Byrne is "a lecherous defective dreamer" resembling someone in Homer called Margites. "Him the gods / Had not made skilled in craft or good in Greek. / He failed in every art." Byrne is the artist as predatory parasite. His musical compositions are hissed. His painting exhibition is closed down by the police ("The gallery was full of ladies fainting"). His reliable area of success is the bedroom--preferably one belonging to a rich widow with an itch to support the arts, although "to give Byrne his due, he was a maker, / A natural father far more than a wencher." Even his versifying biographer may be one of his scattered, multiracial offspring. Byrne is last seen in Marrakesh, on the run from a bigamy charge, discredited for cooperation with the Nazis, introducing "'My boys. / I prefer women, but these make less noise.'" The novel's second half concerns some of Byrne's offspring and their ludicrous attempt to rehabilitate the paternal reputation. It is as learned, witty, and wildly rhymed as the first half, and bloodies sacred cows with similar energy. If Burgess's satire has a single target, it is those excesses of avant-garde modernism that have led to what he considered dead ends. Byrne sees his proposed biography as "a cautionary tale." It is, but a vastly amusing, sparkling, stimulating variation on that dreary genre. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
See all Editorial Reviews
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