A review by lori85
Palace of the Peacock by Wilson Harris

2.0

I can see what this book was trying to do with its rejection of the conventional novel structure and linear time as aspects of colonialism, but unfortunately this has got to be some of the clunkiest prose I've ever read. Samples:

The leaves driped in the entire forest the dewy old tears of the season of drought that affected the early tropical morning and left me rigid and trembling. A pearl and half-light and arrow shot along the still veined branches. The charcoal memory of the hour lifed as a curtain rises upon the light of an eternal design. (Chapter 6)

The cross she had forgiven and forgotten in an earlier dream of distant centuries and a returning to the Siberian unconscious pilgrimage in the straits where life had possessed and abandoned at the same time the apprehension of a facile beginning and ending. (Chapter 7)

Yeesh.