adam_channing's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
adam_channing's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
quiraang's review against another edition
5.0
This is one of my favourite books. Every few years I reread it and usually find something that I previously missed.
forever_amber's review against another edition
3.0
Burgess has a really neat way of connecting words and he certainly has got a style in writing. Yet this book expanded almost as the Universe during the Big Bang, which at times bored me (toward the end I skipped pages, I admit it). Maybe if I was in the Catholic faith, it would have affected me more, who knows. Yet one can see the vast imagination and life experience of the author. I really liked the main themes in the novel and Kenneth Toomey as well. This is also my first try with male homosexuality as a point of interest and I liked the interplay with Catholicism and state ostracism. Most of all I liked the inevitability of human loneliness, regardless of sex, age and class.
chamberk's review against another edition
5.0
This is a hell of a book.
It took me about two and a half months to read, even though it's not one of the longest books I've read. That's cause this sucker is DENSE - no book for someone looking for an easy read.
The narrator, Kenneth Toomey, is a British novelist, now in his eighties, looking back over his life. Despite the fact that he is openly homosexual, officials from the Catholic Church want him to write for them - an account about the recently deceased pope, Gregory XVII, or Carlo Campanati. The two men have lived fairly entwined lives - Ken's sister marries Carlo's brother, and they become a sort of family.
Both Toomey and Campanati are brilliantly realized characters. The arch, snooty voice of Toomey sells the whole book, as he relates the stories of his fame and notoriety. But Carlo is a mystery of sorts, a solid man who believes that evil is an outside force, that man is basically good. But does Toomey share that view? Not quite...
I was hoping this wasn't one of those "here's how my characters live through the various incidents of a historical period" novels, and it wasn't. Though Toomey and Campanati encounter Italian fascists, Nazi propogandists, and groovy Californian cult leaders, the characters never take a back seat to events - the events inform us more about the characters. I really appreciated that.
All I've known of Burgess is his (admittedly impressive) Clockwork Orange, but after Earthly Powers my interest is piqued. Definitely one of the most unique and memorable books I've read this year.
It took me about two and a half months to read, even though it's not one of the longest books I've read. That's cause this sucker is DENSE - no book for someone looking for an easy read.
The narrator, Kenneth Toomey, is a British novelist, now in his eighties, looking back over his life. Despite the fact that he is openly homosexual, officials from the Catholic Church want him to write for them - an account about the recently deceased pope, Gregory XVII, or Carlo Campanati. The two men have lived fairly entwined lives - Ken's sister marries Carlo's brother, and they become a sort of family.
Both Toomey and Campanati are brilliantly realized characters. The arch, snooty voice of Toomey sells the whole book, as he relates the stories of his fame and notoriety. But Carlo is a mystery of sorts, a solid man who believes that evil is an outside force, that man is basically good. But does Toomey share that view? Not quite...
I was hoping this wasn't one of those "here's how my characters live through the various incidents of a historical period" novels, and it wasn't. Though Toomey and Campanati encounter Italian fascists, Nazi propogandists, and groovy Californian cult leaders, the characters never take a back seat to events - the events inform us more about the characters. I really appreciated that.
All I've known of Burgess is his (admittedly impressive) Clockwork Orange, but after Earthly Powers my interest is piqued. Definitely one of the most unique and memorable books I've read this year.
opusfra's review against another edition
5.0
Sheer brilliance. An epic drama with fascinating characters, wonderfully written. Absolute favourite of mine.
chramies's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
This for me has distinct parallels with William S Burroughs' "The Western Lands," which appeared just a few years later. Ageing author, obsessed with systems of belief and control, and who has written such mountains of experimental stuff in his past, writes a long, flat-out and relatively conventional novel in which he stuffs in (ooer, missis) everything that has obsessed him.
EP is a history of the twentieth century from someone who watched it all unfold, but admits that he is making much of it up; a vapid, mean-souled individual who is also gay (I felt AB was careful to separate his unpleasant character from his homosexuality, thus avoiding accusations of homophobia). A family saga where the family is both powerful and dysfunctional; the protagonist really isn't Ken Toomey, it's Carlo Campanati, 'shaman and showman', an energetic and proactive Catholic who makes it to Pope, against a dark background (the French title is "La Puissance des Tenebres," 'The power of the shadows') in which the Devil is real - or at least he is in Toomey's (somewhat addled) mind.
Perhaps the most satisfying section of the book is the bit set in Malaysia, where Ken Toomey encounters a malevolent local who clearly has a hotline to something he shouldn't.
Which oddly makes this a novel of the supernatural. This is a world where the Devil does really, genuinely take people over; and that being the case, surely our reaction has to be different to our reaction in a world where some people are just plain bad.
To which end, EP draws in the Nazis, and a fictionalised account of the Jonestown massacre - although what AB describes is closer to the Waco Siege ... which hadn't happened when he wrote it. (I'm sure Burgess would have been delighted with my typo of "Branch Dravidians".) *although I now find that the similarity may be between Burgess' description and something I wrote in about 1992, i.e. still before Waco, which increased the 'siege' element of it. The Branch Davidians, e.g., didn't commit mass suicide.
There's a lot of it, and even trying to write about it gives me indigestion mainly because Ken Toomey (aka fictionalised W Somerset Maugham) is such a disagreeable man. Although so are most of his other characters - the only real exception being Carlo's brother who Toomey of course hates and who seems ok. The women are equally spiteful and nasty - I could accuse AB of hating women, but in that case he presumably hates men as well. I find this a theme in his books, like a shortcut to making an interesting character is to make them an unmitigated asshole. Possibly things like 'American Psycho' are a sendup of this tendency - as DFW once said, Brett Easton Ellis only writes shallow mean characters because that's all he can do.
Which is a shame. Cut him out of the narrative and it'd be fine. Down frorm four stars to three for that reason.
EP is a history of the twentieth century from someone who watched it all unfold, but admits that he is making much of it up; a vapid, mean-souled individual who is also gay (I felt AB was careful to separate his unpleasant character from his homosexuality, thus avoiding accusations of homophobia). A family saga where the family is both powerful and dysfunctional; the protagonist really isn't Ken Toomey, it's Carlo Campanati, 'shaman and showman', an energetic and proactive Catholic who makes it to Pope, against a dark background (the French title is "La Puissance des Tenebres," 'The power of the shadows') in which the Devil is real - or at least he is in Toomey's (somewhat addled) mind.
Perhaps the most satisfying section of the book is the bit set in Malaysia, where Ken Toomey encounters a malevolent local who clearly has a hotline to something he shouldn't.
Which oddly makes this a novel of the supernatural. This is a world where the Devil does really, genuinely take people over; and that being the case, surely our reaction has to be different to our reaction in a world where some people are just plain bad.
To which end, EP draws in the Nazis, and a fictionalised account of the Jonestown massacre - although what AB describes is closer to the Waco Siege ... which hadn't happened when he wrote it. (I'm sure Burgess would have been delighted with my typo of "Branch Dravidians".) *although I now find that the similarity may be between Burgess' description and something I wrote in about 1992, i.e. still before Waco, which increased the 'siege' element of it. The Branch Davidians, e.g., didn't commit mass suicide.
There's a lot of it, and even trying to write about it gives me indigestion mainly because Ken Toomey (aka fictionalised W Somerset Maugham) is such a disagreeable man. Although so are most of his other characters - the only real exception being Carlo's brother who Toomey of course hates and who seems ok. The women are equally spiteful and nasty - I could accuse AB of hating women, but in that case he presumably hates men as well. I find this a theme in his books, like a shortcut to making an interesting character is to make them an unmitigated asshole. Possibly things like 'American Psycho' are a sendup of this tendency - as DFW once said, Brett Easton Ellis only writes shallow mean characters because that's all he can do.
Which is a shame. Cut him out of the narrative and it'd be fine. Down frorm four stars to three for that reason.