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袥芯褌械褉械褟
Peter Sinclair is tormented by bereavement and failure. In an attempt to conjure some meaning from his life, he embarks on an autobiography, but he finds himself writing the story of another man in another, imagined, world whose insidious attraction draws him even further in...
260 pages, ebook
First published May 25, 1981
67 people are currently reading
4105 people want to read
About the author
Christopher Priest
194听books1,042听followersChristopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children鈥檚 non-fiction.
He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.
He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.
As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children鈥檚 non-fiction.
He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.
He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.
As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 281 reviews
May 28, 2018
I genuinely can't decide if I liked this or not. I certainly enjoyed reading it, but doing so was somewhat like losing my mind. I also have a suspicion that Priest crafted the novel precisely to elicit this effect on the reader, which makes me respect him even more in an odd way. All in all, I'm very confused, but I still enjoyed it.
I have a theory that this book inspired Haruki Murakami to write听. There are just so many similarities in story, narrative, and theme between the two novels to ignore. Plus, I kind of love the idea of Murakami reading Christopher Priest. Maybe I've invented this whole thing.
The closest conclusion I can come to is that The Affirmation is a story about mental illness, or maybe alternate realities, or maybe self identity, or maybe something else entirely. I really don't know, but it was good and I'd read it again.
August 27, 2019
鈥淭here was a duplication of myself involved, perhaps even a triplication. There was I who was writing. There was I whom I could remember. And there was I of whom I wrote, the protagonist of the story.鈥�
鈥� Christopher Priest, The Affirmation
Among the most remarkable novels I鈥檝e ever encountered. Here are the opening lines: 鈥淭his much I know for sure: My name is Peter Sinclair. I am English and I am, or I was, twenty-nine years old. Already there is an uncertainty and my sureness recedes. Age is a variable; I am no longer twenty-nine.鈥�
However, with each page we turn, the more we discover that, along with Peter鈥檚 age, nearly everything else is variable - other than the unfolding drama narrated at a slow pace in a rather flat voice by the brooding, morose Peter, a man who has recently lost his father, his girlfriend and his job as a chemist for a large pharmaceutical company, the surrounding people, places and things in his life repeatedly shift and glide in diverse and assorted combinations. Novel as jigsaw puzzle with all identical interlocking pieces. Put it together any way you like and watch the emerging picture change each time.
Sound extraordinary? It is extraordinary. So much so, rather than commenting on developing story line or overall plot, below are several pieces of the jigsaw taken from the opening chapters to serve as enticement to treat yourself to Christopher Priest鈥檚 out-of-this-world imagination as you read his tour-de-force novel. Looking at your own life may never be the same again.
Imagination is the Key - Peter escapes dirty, stinking, noisy London to a rundown, dilapidated secluded country cottage thanks to a friend of his father鈥檚. For Peter, this is a time for contemplation and inwardness. Obliged to do some restoration, repair and painting in lieu of rent, Peter imagines what the rooms of the cottage will ultimately look like when restored. He completes one room with a final coat of white paint and is elated - what he had imagined for the room came to be realized. Ah, so it鈥檚 imagination first; realization second! With this insight, to bring a measure of order and clarity to his own life, Peter goes about imagining his past, sifting through his memories in a way that isn鈥檛 too rigid or pedantic on one side nor too wild and anarchic on the other.
Flash of Realization 鈥� Trying to remember all those details 鈥� things like your teachers and all the children in each of your classes in grade school along with the subjects you learned - and keep it all straight in your mind is nearly impossible. Peter makes a critical discovery 鈥� he should have to write it all down. Time to dig out that typewriter his older sister Felicity gave him the previous Christmas. Peter reflects: 鈥淚 wrote because of an inner need, and that need was to create a clearer vision of myself, and in writing I became what I wrote.鈥� And the more Peter writes, the more he recognizes a simple recounting of facts is insufficient; what he needs is story. Thus, Peter鈥檚 writing moves from nonfiction to fiction, a fictional autobiography distilling a 鈥渉igher truth.鈥�
New World; New Man 鈥� Creative juices flowing, imagination on fire, Peter invents a parallel world where England becomes Faiandland, London becomes Jethra, older sister Felicity becomes Kalia and girlfriend Gracia becomes Seri. To the south of Faiandland, there is a vast network of islands, each island an independent country. To all the inhabitants of Jethra and Peter鈥檚 protagonist, another Peter Sinclair, the islands signify wish and escape. Sitting at his typewriter in his white room, Peter thinks: 鈥淚 had found myself, explained myself, and in a very personal sense of the word I had defined myself." Quite the transition for a man who spent years as a chemist for a pharmaceutical company!
Major Disruption - But then it happens - older sister Felicity pulls up with her car and beholds her brother living in the middle of filth, including a mountain of empty whisky bottles piled up in the backyard. Forever overly judgmental, Felicity eyes his white room as a complete garbage dump. Peter recoils: 鈥淪he was perceiving it wrongly. I had learned how to write my manuscript by observing my white room. Felicity saw only narrow or actual truth. She was unreceptive to higher truth, to imaginative coherence, and she would certainly fail to understand the kinds of truth I told in my manuscript.鈥� Felicity insists Peter leave the cottage and come live the clean life with her family. Peter acquiesces but resolves no one other than himself would ever read his manuscript.
Voyage to Dream Archipelago 鈥� Peter is the other Peter in his created world, on a ship south of Jethra. Now that he has won the lottery, he is headed for an island where he will undergo a surgical operation that will give him immortality. Quite a prize! However, the operation comes with a price: he will lose all his memory. Peter鈥檚 past will have to be reconstructed from the information he completes in a detailed questionnaire. Peter tells medical staff there is no need 鈥� just so happens he has a manuscript he wrote two summers ago containing his autobiography!
Again, these are mere snapshots from the narrative. The plot curves, twists, bends, warps and thickens in penetrating ways not only for Peter but for a reader. At one point in the Dream Archipelago, after his operation, Peter wakes up in a white room with his head shaved, scars on his neck and skull and other parts of his body. And his memory gone. All of this, especially the loss of memory, has an eerie echo of someone who has undergone electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
Does this hint that Peter鈥檚 parallel world has been created to serve as an elaborate shield in order for him to deal with his need to submit to such treatment? Are we dealing with a case of serious mental imbalance? Or, expressed in less politically correct terms, is it quite possible a large portion or even all of Peter鈥檚 story is the concoction of a madman? Perhaps, in this case, being a madman is more of an asset than a liability. Recall the sign at the entrance to the magic theater from Hermann Hesse's novel Steppenwolf: FOR MADMEN ONLY. Questions to consider as you take a literary Christopher Priest-style magic carpet ride reading The Affirmation.
Lead singer in a rock group? Photo taken back in the early 1970s when author Christopher Priest was in the same age range as Peter Sinclair, protagonist of The Affirmation.
April 14, 2017
Oh, now, this is a rare gem! :)
The blurb does NOT do it justice. Rather, try to follow me here, because this could get rather twisty, but what we've got is what seems to be a rather self-absorbed man trying to come to terms with personal tragedy, writing a manuscript that is all about learning who he is and getting over a girl, but it soon becomes an adventuresome trip through a bunch of very interesting islands, him having won the gift of immortality through a lottery ticket.
The world-building is all kinds of wonderful and there's very little big action in the novel beause it's fully content to remain introspective, thoughtful, and exploratory. We have two women that feature prominently. One is in the past and the other is one he discovered on his trip through the islands on the way to the clinic that would give him his won immortality.
So far, so good.
However, this is where memory and reality start getting wonky. He discovers that the place he wrote of in his manuscript is all a lie, a fake, but it's our modern London. The islands are "real" in every sense of the word and the new girl and the clinic are getting increasingly frustrated with him, but to make things even worse, this "immortality" treatment makes you forget everything and you have to work your way back.
So should he trust the manuscript or the people who are nursing him back to health?
Delicious storytelling. And it only gets much, much worse, speeding up the reveals in a way that's worthy for any fan of Philip K Dick OR very deep pyschological thrillers, reality benders, SF-element traditional fictions, or any wonderful texts that explore the nature of madness from within the mind of the insane.
Of course, this book is even more beautiful because there's NO definitive answer. Is this or that real? Is anything? Is he mad? Is the world he dreamed up (ours, btw,) fake?
Totally awesome.
This kind of read always gets my mind pumping, and even though the text itself is always as clear as glass, Christopher Priest manages to pull off one of the twistiest tales I've ever read. So good! :)
This is the third book I've read of his, from to , and this one might be my favorite for it's equal portions of clarity and confouding reveals. In it's own way I think it's superior to The Prestige, even though I loved that one a LOT.
I don't know. Perhaps I just love reality/memory bendy stuff more than anything else. :)
Totally awesome. :)
The blurb does NOT do it justice. Rather, try to follow me here, because this could get rather twisty, but what we've got is what seems to be a rather self-absorbed man trying to come to terms with personal tragedy, writing a manuscript that is all about learning who he is and getting over a girl, but it soon becomes an adventuresome trip through a bunch of very interesting islands, him having won the gift of immortality through a lottery ticket.
The world-building is all kinds of wonderful and there's very little big action in the novel beause it's fully content to remain introspective, thoughtful, and exploratory. We have two women that feature prominently. One is in the past and the other is one he discovered on his trip through the islands on the way to the clinic that would give him his won immortality.
So far, so good.
However, this is where memory and reality start getting wonky. He discovers that the place he wrote of in his manuscript is all a lie, a fake, but it's our modern London. The islands are "real" in every sense of the word and the new girl and the clinic are getting increasingly frustrated with him, but to make things even worse, this "immortality" treatment makes you forget everything and you have to work your way back.
So should he trust the manuscript or the people who are nursing him back to health?
Delicious storytelling. And it only gets much, much worse, speeding up the reveals in a way that's worthy for any fan of Philip K Dick OR very deep pyschological thrillers, reality benders, SF-element traditional fictions, or any wonderful texts that explore the nature of madness from within the mind of the insane.
Of course, this book is even more beautiful because there's NO definitive answer. Is this or that real? Is anything? Is he mad? Is the world he dreamed up (ours, btw,) fake?
Totally awesome.
This kind of read always gets my mind pumping, and even though the text itself is always as clear as glass, Christopher Priest manages to pull off one of the twistiest tales I've ever read. So good! :)
This is the third book I've read of his, from to , and this one might be my favorite for it's equal portions of clarity and confouding reveals. In it's own way I think it's superior to The Prestige, even though I loved that one a LOT.
I don't know. Perhaps I just love reality/memory bendy stuff more than anything else. :)
Totally awesome. :)
January 10, 2015
Not recommended for: people who like their books to be straightforward, easily understandable, and conventional. Also people who want their books to include Exciting Things Happening.
Special Interests covered: mental illness, philosophy.
--
A plain description of the novel would make it sound like a firework display of postmodern literary exuberance; but in fact it is anything but. It's a surprisingly low-key work, in its prose (quite quotidian), pacing (very measured), and mood (ruminating). It doesn't assault the reader with its brilliance; what it DOES do is crawl under your skin and refuse to leave. I found myself increasingly gripped, even though there was nothing much going on. In some ways, it has a bit of the sensibility of an old horror film, although there's not much actual horror. Or maybe there is, but it's genuine horror and dread, not the sort that is just code for monsters and serial killers. I suppose you could call it a novel of "psychological suspense". It's also exceptionally clever.
This may not be the best place to get into Priest - try "The Prestige" instead - and I can see how this might be very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. I think I may actually both love AND hate it. But if you like serious literary fiction, and are willing to take novels with fantasy elements seriously, it's a must-read; likewise, if you're a genre reader who's also willing to give themselves a headache now and then, this is considerably easier to get through than, say, Gene Wolfe. In fact, it's very easy to read, because it's written very simply and honestly. The difficulty comes after you've read it, when you're trying to decide what you feel about it.
It's not a perfect book - it's a little too emotionally cold, and a little too slow, particularly at the start - but it's powerful, memorable, highly intellectual, and brilliantly constructed.
If you want a longer review, which goes more deeply into my feelings about it and its strengths and weaknesses, here's the review I put on my blog when I read it:
Special Interests covered: mental illness, philosophy.
--
A plain description of the novel would make it sound like a firework display of postmodern literary exuberance; but in fact it is anything but. It's a surprisingly low-key work, in its prose (quite quotidian), pacing (very measured), and mood (ruminating). It doesn't assault the reader with its brilliance; what it DOES do is crawl under your skin and refuse to leave. I found myself increasingly gripped, even though there was nothing much going on. In some ways, it has a bit of the sensibility of an old horror film, although there's not much actual horror. Or maybe there is, but it's genuine horror and dread, not the sort that is just code for monsters and serial killers. I suppose you could call it a novel of "psychological suspense". It's also exceptionally clever.
This may not be the best place to get into Priest - try "The Prestige" instead - and I can see how this might be very much a love-it-or-hate-it book. I think I may actually both love AND hate it. But if you like serious literary fiction, and are willing to take novels with fantasy elements seriously, it's a must-read; likewise, if you're a genre reader who's also willing to give themselves a headache now and then, this is considerably easier to get through than, say, Gene Wolfe. In fact, it's very easy to read, because it's written very simply and honestly. The difficulty comes after you've read it, when you're trying to decide what you feel about it.
It's not a perfect book - it's a little too emotionally cold, and a little too slow, particularly at the start - but it's powerful, memorable, highly intellectual, and brilliantly constructed.
If you want a longer review, which goes more deeply into my feelings about it and its strengths and weaknesses, here's the review I put on my blog when I read it:
November 24, 2016
When I finished the last page of this book, I threw it across the room. I thought people only did that in anecdotes. Ironically enough, this book has turned me into a moderately implausible anecdote.
You should read it. Read all his things. CP is my hero.
(P.S., the blurb is terrible. I assure you, this is not a book about a sad writer boy whose girlfriend left him. Everyone here is better than that.)
You should read it. Read all his things. CP is my hero.
(P.S., the blurb is terrible. I assure you, this is not a book about a sad writer boy whose girlfriend left him. Everyone here is better than that.)
May 21, 2011
I'm not sure what I just read but I am sure of two things: I loved it, and I will re-read it. I will read it again not just because I loved it, but because I want to understand it better, and want to pick it apart, and put it back together even though I'm not confident that it can be done.
I was captivated at first with some fairly mundane parallels to my life, an easy attraction to an everyday protagonist that just happens to share some of my mannerisms, feelings, thought processes.
Then around page 30 I hit a passage that made me question what I'd just read, and made me want to go re-read everything that had been written up to that point. I didn't, though; I chose to go on forward. I was greeted by a spiraling, harrowing descent that I do not wish to describe further for fear of ruining it for anyone that reads this review.
For a somewhat neurotic and certainly introspective reader like me it was like some kind of a drug, and simultaneously a cautionary tale against it.
Surreal and thrilling. I enjoyed every page. Priest does a remarkable job of writing with a clarity and succinctness that I envy.
I was captivated at first with some fairly mundane parallels to my life, an easy attraction to an everyday protagonist that just happens to share some of my mannerisms, feelings, thought processes.
Then around page 30 I hit a passage that made me question what I'd just read, and made me want to go re-read everything that had been written up to that point. I didn't, though; I chose to go on forward. I was greeted by a spiraling, harrowing descent that I do not wish to describe further for fear of ruining it for anyone that reads this review.
For a somewhat neurotic and certainly introspective reader like me it was like some kind of a drug, and simultaneously a cautionary tale against it.
Surreal and thrilling. I enjoyed every page. Priest does a remarkable job of writing with a clarity and succinctness that I envy.
May 21, 2019
Now that I've read everything by Nina Allan (to date), I've decided it's about time I started reading more work by her partner, Christopher Priest. I have no idea whether The Affirmation is a good place to start, but it certainly feels like it. This is an eerie novel which flips seamlessly between real and imagined worlds (but which is which?) while constructing a clever, intricate web of details around a doubled central character.
29-year-old Peter Sinclair has recently been through great personal upheaval, involving the death of his father, a tempestuous breakup, and the loss of his job and, subsequently, his flat. Therefore he has no qualms about moving out of London and into a dilapidated cottage belonging to a friend of his father's. The idea is that he will temporarily live there and, in lieu of rent, decorate the place. However, once there, he becomes obsessed with a different task: writing down the story of his life. At first he tries to write a straightforward memoir, but this doesn't help him make sense of anything. Eventually, he realises there is only one way to approach it: 'the deeper truth could only be told by falsehood'.
In this manuscript, the second Peter lives in a place he has invented 鈥� Jethra, a city in Faiandland. (These locations are part of the Dream Archipelago, which appears in a number of Priest's novels.) He has won an unusual lottery: the prize is immortality, conveyed by means of a treatment known as athanasia, which he must now travel to the island of Collago to receive. This all makes a kind of sense until we discover Jethra-Peter is also writing a fictionalised account of his life 鈥� in which he has invented a city called London and which describes, in every detail, all that we know of original-Peter's life. Not only that, but this manuscript is crucial to the athanasia process.
The Affirmation is written in a style I would describe as smooth. At first, it is deceptively mundane. But, even before the Jethra narrative enters the frame, there is also something quite unnerving about it. The first few chapters in particular reminded me of Frederick in John Fowles' , except that we are never allowed outside Peter's narrow, twisted viewpoint. The one exception to that is an intervention from original-Peter's sister Felicity; through her words, we realise his perception bears very little resemblance to the truth. The cottage is a dump, and what Peter has told us about his ex-girlfriend Gracia is a pack of lies. However, this small window on reality is soon swallowed up by Peter's imagined lives.
The reader, then, is doubly unsure who or what to believe, and this only becomes more difficult as the two narratives bleed into each other more and more. If it was possible for a book to make me feel physically dizzy, this one would. The two Peters are like the two sides 鈥� or one side? 鈥� of a M枚bius strip, and each explains the other, so (arguably, anyway) you can't believe one is invented without believing the other one is too. (A comment on fiction in itself, maybe. If The Affirmation was published today, it would surely be considered a playful take on the 'literary vs. science fiction' debate.) It's a strange experiment that actually comes off. And what makes it work is that it is also just a really good, really enjoyable story.
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29-year-old Peter Sinclair has recently been through great personal upheaval, involving the death of his father, a tempestuous breakup, and the loss of his job and, subsequently, his flat. Therefore he has no qualms about moving out of London and into a dilapidated cottage belonging to a friend of his father's. The idea is that he will temporarily live there and, in lieu of rent, decorate the place. However, once there, he becomes obsessed with a different task: writing down the story of his life. At first he tries to write a straightforward memoir, but this doesn't help him make sense of anything. Eventually, he realises there is only one way to approach it: 'the deeper truth could only be told by falsehood'.
In this manuscript, the second Peter lives in a place he has invented 鈥� Jethra, a city in Faiandland. (These locations are part of the Dream Archipelago, which appears in a number of Priest's novels.) He has won an unusual lottery: the prize is immortality, conveyed by means of a treatment known as athanasia, which he must now travel to the island of Collago to receive. This all makes a kind of sense until we discover Jethra-Peter is also writing a fictionalised account of his life 鈥� in which he has invented a city called London and which describes, in every detail, all that we know of original-Peter's life. Not only that, but this manuscript is crucial to the athanasia process.
The Affirmation is written in a style I would describe as smooth. At first, it is deceptively mundane. But, even before the Jethra narrative enters the frame, there is also something quite unnerving about it. The first few chapters in particular reminded me of Frederick in John Fowles' , except that we are never allowed outside Peter's narrow, twisted viewpoint. The one exception to that is an intervention from original-Peter's sister Felicity; through her words, we realise his perception bears very little resemblance to the truth. The cottage is a dump, and what Peter has told us about his ex-girlfriend Gracia is a pack of lies. However, this small window on reality is soon swallowed up by Peter's imagined lives.
The reader, then, is doubly unsure who or what to believe, and this only becomes more difficult as the two narratives bleed into each other more and more. If it was possible for a book to make me feel physically dizzy, this one would. The two Peters are like the two sides 鈥� or one side? 鈥� of a M枚bius strip, and each explains the other, so (arguably, anyway) you can't believe one is invented without believing the other one is too. (A comment on fiction in itself, maybe. If The Affirmation was published today, it would surely be considered a playful take on the 'literary vs. science fiction' debate.) It's a strange experiment that actually comes off. And what makes it work is that it is also just a really good, really enjoyable story.
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March 14, 2025
Neurotisches Puzzle 眉ber einen langweiligen Menschen.
Inhalt: 1/5 Sterne (Jammerlappen-Story)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (unauff盲llige Sprache)
贰谤锄盲丑濒蝉迟颈尘尘别: 3/5 Sterne (konsequent, aber unzuverl盲ssig)
Komposition: 1/5 Sterne (neurotisches Puzzle)
Leseerlebnis: 2/5 Sterne (guter kurzer Anfang, schlimmes Ende)
Anl盲sslich von Wolf Hass鈥� Wackelkontakt hat mich die Recherche auf einen Science-Fiction-Klassiker namens Der wei脽e Raum, im Original: , von Christopher Priest gebracht. Wie in liest eine Figur 眉ber sich selbst und eine Realit盲tsspaltung findet statt. Im Gegensatz aber zu Wackelkontakt streut Priest noch wagemutige Spekulationen ein, die sogenannte Athanasie:
Die Lotterie war etwas, das f眉r andere Leute existierte. Ich war die falsche Person f眉r diesen Gewinn, er war nicht f眉r mich. Die Collago-Lotterie vergab die Athanasiebehandlung als ihren Hauptgewinn: echte Unsterblichkeit, medizinisch garantiert. [鈥 Fr眉her hatte ich bisweilen die ironische Bemerkung gemacht, da脽, wenn ewiges Leben eineinhalb Jahrhunderte Besch盲ftigung mit Kreuzwortr盲tseln bedeutete, ich es zufrieden sei, an nat眉rlichen Ursachen zu sterben.
Peter Sinclair, zu Beginn von Der wei脽e Raum 29 Jahre alt, im Jahr 1976. Er verliert so ziemlich alles auf einen Schlag, seinen Vater, der stirbt, seinen Job wegen der Rezession, seine Wohnung wegen eines Eigent眉merwechsels und dann noch die Beziehung mit Gracia, die er eigentlich 眉ber alles liebt. All dies zusammen bringt ihn an die Grenze des Belastbaren und dar眉ber hinaus. Er muss sich und sein ganzes Leben in Frage stellen. Er beginnt, abgeschieden im Landhaus eines Freundes von der Familie, zu schreiben:
W盲hrend mein Manuskript an Umfang zunahm, trat ich in ein Stadium geistiger Ausbeutung ein. Ich schlief nachts nur noch f眉nf oder sechs Stunden, und wenn ich erwachte, f眉hrte mich mein erster Weg an den Arbeitstisch, wo ich 眉berlas, was ich am Tag zuvor geschrieben hatte. Ich ordnete alles dem Schreiben unter, a脽 nur, wenn der Hunger mich dazu trieb, schlief nur, wenn ich ersch枚pft war. Alles andere wurde vernachl盲ssigt; die Renovierungsarbeiten f眉r Edwin und Marge wurden auf unbestimmte Zeit vertagt.
Peter schreibt so besessen, obsessiv-verstrickt immersiv, dass auch im Erz盲hltext selbst seine Realit盲t nach und nach das d眉nne Gewebe der Konsistenz zu verlieren beginnt. Interessanterweise schafft das erste Sechstel einen Sog, der poetologisch-眉berzeugend, psychologisch-austariert diesen Zusammenbruch nachvollzieht, bis zum kompositorisch H枚hepunkt: die Ankunft seiner Schwester Felicity, das Freudianische Realit盲tsprinzip schlechthin:
Felicity war bis in die Mitte des Zimmers gekommen und stand neben mir. 禄Ich mu脽te kommen, Peter. Am Telefon h枚rtest du dich so seltsam an, und James und ich, wir hatten beide das Gef眉hl, da脽 etwas nicht stimmte. Als du die Briefe nicht beantwortetest, rief ich Edwin an. Was tust du eigentlich?芦
禄Was willst du von mir, Felicity?芦
禄Ich machte mir Sorgen um dich. Und es war nicht unbegr眉ndet, wie ich sehe! Allein der Zustand dieses Zimmers! Machst du 眉berhaupt nicht sauber?芦
Was kompositorisch au脽ergew枚hnlich gut von Christopher Priest in Der wei脽e Raum angelegt ist, und zwar im ersten Sechstel, verliert sich schnell und entpuppt sich als hei脽e Luft. Die Erz盲hlinstanz verzettelt sich im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes. Das Manuskript bleibt ungeschrieben, die Ebenen mischen sich, die Situation wird von Seite zu Seite langweiliger, beliebiger, 枚der. Die Metapher der Unsterblichkeit (durch das Ver枚ffentlichen eines Buches), durch die Beschreibung und Fixierung von Real-Existierenden zu Buchstaben, misslingt durchaus dort, wo es am Ende doch nur darum geht, dass der Protagonist Gracia nicht hei脽 genug findet, sich nicht um sie k眉mmern will, sondern lieber selbst bemuttert werden m枚chte. Als Plot leider viel viel viel zu d眉nn, obwohl die Mischung der Realit盲tsebenen ungew枚hnlich gut angelegt worden ist. Schade.
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Details 鈥� ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung f眉r mich):
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Inhalt: 鈼廝rotagonist: Peter Sinclair (PS), 眉ber 29 Jahre alt. Nebenfiguren: PS Gef盲hrtin, Gracia (eine Welt) - Seri Fulten (andere Welt); PS Schwester Felicity, 31 Jahre alt, (in der einen Welt) 鈥� Kalia (in der anderen).
鈼廧耻蝉补尘尘别苍蹿补蝉蝉耻苍驳/滨苍丑补濒迟蝉补苍驳补产别:
Kapitel 1-4: Peters Vater stirbt, wenig sp盲ter verliert er seinen Arbeitsplatz, dann wird ihm die Wohnung gek眉ndigt und seine Beziehung mit Gracia geht in die Br眉che. Als Krisenbew盲ltigungsstrategie k眉mmert er sich das Landhaus von einem Freund der Familie, Edwin Miller. Statt aber das Haus zu renovieren, verliert sich PS ins Trinken und Schreiben und verfertigt eine Autobiographie, bevor er diese jedoch beenden kann, st枚rt ihn seine Schwester, die sich um ihn in Sheffield k眉mmern will. 鈥�
Kapitel 5-9: Pl枚tzlich ist der Ich-Erz盲hler auf einem Schiff. Er hat in der Collagoe-Lotterie gewonnen, n盲mlich das ewige Leben, und muss deshalb von Jethra, seiner Heimatstadt, nach Muriseay reisen. Auf dem Weg lernt er Matilde kennen, die ihn aber abblitzen l盲sst. In Muriseay, im Lotterieb眉ro, lernt er Seri Fulten kennen, die ihn schlie脽lich, 眉berdr眉ssig von ihrem Job im Lotterieb眉ro, nach Collago begleitet. Peter befindet sich noch immer im Zweifel, ob er die Operation an sich durchf眉hren m枚chte, die ihm ewiges Leben (oder krebsfreies, altersfreies Leben) verspricht, denn diese w眉rde ihn sein Ged盲chtnis kosten.
Kapitel 10-11: In Sheffield erholt sich PS. Sie renovieren auch das Landhaus. Felicity f盲delt ein Wiedersehen mit Gracia an. Sie hatte eine Aff盲re mit einem Steve, aber sie vers枚hnen sich wieder und beschlie脽en zusammenzuziehen.
Kapitel 12-15: Auf dem Weg zur Klinik, auf einem Schiff namens Mulligayn. Nach seiner Ankunft, Gespr盲che in der Klinik. Nach einem medizinischen Untersuchung stellt sich heraus, dass Peter an einen Aneurysma leidet. Er entscheidet sich f眉r die Operation, die ihm das Leben nicht nur verl盲ngert, sondern rettet. Aufgrund seiner (auch in der Parallelwelt geschriebenen Autobiographie) wird die Vorbereitungszeit verk眉rzt. Laren Dobey, seine Therapeutin, und Seri stehen ihm bei, wollen ihm aber das Manuskript mit seinen Erinnerungen erst zum Lesen geben, wenn er etwas stabiler, mnemotisch und psychisch, geworden ist. Eine Entfremdung zwischen PS und Seri findet statt. Seri erz盲hlt ihm von seinem Manuskript, in diesem wird von Felicity, Gracia gesprochen.
Kapitel 16-17: In London, Gracia, die nach ihrem vorherigen Selbstmordversuch eine Therapeutin namens Jane hat, und PS, immer noch arbeitslos, streiten sich wieder. PS tagtr盲umt, w盲hrend Gracia arbeitet, von Seri, die seine sexuelle Phantasie darstellt, der Gracia nicht entspricht. Er debattiert mit Seri, macht eine Tagestour, als er in die Wohnung zur眉ckkommt, hat Gracia einen Selbstmordversuch begangen. Er sieht, dass Gracia in seinem Roman gelesen hat. Er ruft den Notarzt.
Kapitel 18-20: Langsam gewinnt er auf Collago sein Ged盲chtnis zur眉ck. Als er das erste Mal zugibt, etwas vergessen zu haben, wird er als fast geheilt eingestuft und darf sich auch au脽erhalb der Klinik freibewegen. Es wird ihm die Einsicht in sein Manuskript gew盲hrt. Er darf es lesen. Besessen von seinen Erinnerungen, verwirft er die Pl盲ne, die Seri f眉r sie beide im Sinne gehabt hat. Er verschwindet heimlich nachts.
Kapitel 21: London. Gracias Selbstmordversuch nimmt ihn mit. Er tagtr盲umt weiterhin von Seri. Er verfolgt sie, w盲hrend sie aus London herausf盲hrt. Sie finden am Strand zusammen. Sie machen eine Inseltour. Seri will ihn davon abbringen, zur眉ck zu Gracia zu gehen. Sie kehren nach London zur眉ck. Seri ungehalten.
Kapitel 22: PS kehrt zur眉ck. Gracia redet mit Jean, ihrer Therapeutin. Gracia ungehalten. PS will mit ihr 眉ber das Manuskript reden, alles klarstellen, aber Gracia sagt, dass sie nicht im Manuskript gelesen habe. Es g盲be keines. Die Seiten seien leer. Sie geht zur眉ck zu Steve, l盲sst Peter alleine in der Wohnung. Mehr als ein Jahr seit seinem Aufenthalt im Landhaus sind vergangen. Dieses Jahr ist noch nicht im Manuskript enthalten. Er gibt Seri recht, dass er sich weiter seiner Selbstbeforschung widmen muss.
Kapitel 23-24: Collago. Er reist zur眉ck nach Jethra, Richtung Norden. Auf Seevra, dem letzten Stop vor Jethra, trifft er Seri wieder. Sie will ihn davon abbringen, nach Gracia zu suchen. Er sei nun Athanasier (nach seiner Operation). Sie sind wieder in London, und in London verliert er Seri aus dem Blick.
Inhaltsangabe/Zusammenfassung (kurz): Durch eine Reihe von Ungl眉cken ger盲t Peter Sinclair in eine Lebenskrise, die ihn traumatisiert, sodass er eine Phantasiewelt erzeugt, in der Menschen von lebensbedrohlichen Krankheiten geheilt werden (wie sein Vater) und sich alle Welt um ihn sorgt und ihn aufp盲ppelt, indes geht die Erz盲hlzeit weiter und alle Versuche, seiner Schwester und seiner Lebensgef盲hrtin scheitern, ihn von seiner Phantasie zu befreien.
鈥� eine Art physisch-psychische Lebenszusammenbruch, nachgezeichnet eines sehr uninteressanten, sehr wenig elaborierten Menschen, also ein wenig Houellebecq, ein wenig Strunk, ziemlich glatt geb眉rsteter Akademiker, der eigentlich nur Sex will, umsorgt werden m枚chte, dessen Krise dadurch in Gang ger盲t, dass sein Vater stirbt, er allein steht. Er beginnt zu trinken und zu schreiben und verliert sich in seinen Schreib- und Selbstbet盲ubungsversuchen, bis er nicht mehr zwischen Realit盲t und Phantasie unterscheiden kann. Als Thema sehr enervierend aufgearbeitet, aber z盲h, inhaltlich langweilig geschrieben, ohne Ereignis, ohne Schreibgrund, ohne rote Linie, eine detaillierte Lebensbeschreibung eines sehr ereignislosen Lebens. Ein wenig wie 鈥濫chtzeitalter鈥� von Tonio Schachinger. --> 1 Stern
Form: Sprache einigerma脽en fl眉ssig, einigerma脽en einfallsreiche Eigennamen, professionell, stereotypisch, Genresprache. Sprache als reines Vehikel, aber nicht unangenehm, keine zu krassen Wiederholungen, keine falsche Konjunktionen, Konstruktionen, Bem眉hen um gewundene, eing盲ngige S盲tze. --> 2 Sterne
贰谤锄盲丑濒蝉迟颈尘尘别: Ich-Erz盲hlinstanz, unsituiert, zwischen zwei Welten, die ineinander 眉bergehen. Ziemlich unklar, wo welche Welt beginnt, wo welche Welt aufh枚rt, aber Reflexion, selbstkritisch, hierdurch anf盲nglich sehr 眉berzeugend, und auch glaubw眉rdig. Als Erz盲hlinstanz und zusammenbrechendes Ich symptomatisch durchexerziert. Aber eben: unsituiert, und daher auch unzuverl盲ssig. --> 3 Sterne
Komposition: Durch die Ereignislosigkeit, gibt es keine inhaltliche Substanz, die formale Erz盲hlweise bricht auseinander. Ein etwas undurchsichtiges, neurotisches Puzzle. --> 1 Stern
Leseerlebnis: Anf盲nglich sehr mitrei脽end, die Krise, sehr 眉berzeugend, der R眉ckzugsort, der Versuch, sich wieder einzufangen, nachdem alles in die Br眉che gegangen ist. Dann das Auftauchen der Schwester, Riss in der Realit盲t. Sehr gelungen, nun pl枚tzlich, wovon l盲uft die Figur eigentlich weg? Ab diesem Zeitpunkt (erstes Sechstel), statt eine Substanz einzul枚sen, flieht die Erz盲hlung in die Phantasiewelt, ziehende, 盲tzend lange Beschreibung, die nicht 眉berzeugen, die langweilen, v枚llig neue Figuren 鈥� Zerst枚rung des Buches und des Lesegenusses. Nur noch anstrengend. --> 1 Stern
Inhalt: 1/5 Sterne (Jammerlappen-Story)
Form: 2/5 Sterne (unauff盲llige Sprache)
贰谤锄盲丑濒蝉迟颈尘尘别: 3/5 Sterne (konsequent, aber unzuverl盲ssig)
Komposition: 1/5 Sterne (neurotisches Puzzle)
Leseerlebnis: 2/5 Sterne (guter kurzer Anfang, schlimmes Ende)
Anl盲sslich von Wolf Hass鈥� Wackelkontakt hat mich die Recherche auf einen Science-Fiction-Klassiker namens Der wei脽e Raum, im Original: , von Christopher Priest gebracht. Wie in liest eine Figur 眉ber sich selbst und eine Realit盲tsspaltung findet statt. Im Gegensatz aber zu Wackelkontakt streut Priest noch wagemutige Spekulationen ein, die sogenannte Athanasie:
Die Lotterie war etwas, das f眉r andere Leute existierte. Ich war die falsche Person f眉r diesen Gewinn, er war nicht f眉r mich. Die Collago-Lotterie vergab die Athanasiebehandlung als ihren Hauptgewinn: echte Unsterblichkeit, medizinisch garantiert. [鈥 Fr眉her hatte ich bisweilen die ironische Bemerkung gemacht, da脽, wenn ewiges Leben eineinhalb Jahrhunderte Besch盲ftigung mit Kreuzwortr盲tseln bedeutete, ich es zufrieden sei, an nat眉rlichen Ursachen zu sterben.
Peter Sinclair, zu Beginn von Der wei脽e Raum 29 Jahre alt, im Jahr 1976. Er verliert so ziemlich alles auf einen Schlag, seinen Vater, der stirbt, seinen Job wegen der Rezession, seine Wohnung wegen eines Eigent眉merwechsels und dann noch die Beziehung mit Gracia, die er eigentlich 眉ber alles liebt. All dies zusammen bringt ihn an die Grenze des Belastbaren und dar眉ber hinaus. Er muss sich und sein ganzes Leben in Frage stellen. Er beginnt, abgeschieden im Landhaus eines Freundes von der Familie, zu schreiben:
W盲hrend mein Manuskript an Umfang zunahm, trat ich in ein Stadium geistiger Ausbeutung ein. Ich schlief nachts nur noch f眉nf oder sechs Stunden, und wenn ich erwachte, f眉hrte mich mein erster Weg an den Arbeitstisch, wo ich 眉berlas, was ich am Tag zuvor geschrieben hatte. Ich ordnete alles dem Schreiben unter, a脽 nur, wenn der Hunger mich dazu trieb, schlief nur, wenn ich ersch枚pft war. Alles andere wurde vernachl盲ssigt; die Renovierungsarbeiten f眉r Edwin und Marge wurden auf unbestimmte Zeit vertagt.
Peter schreibt so besessen, obsessiv-verstrickt immersiv, dass auch im Erz盲hltext selbst seine Realit盲t nach und nach das d眉nne Gewebe der Konsistenz zu verlieren beginnt. Interessanterweise schafft das erste Sechstel einen Sog, der poetologisch-眉berzeugend, psychologisch-austariert diesen Zusammenbruch nachvollzieht, bis zum kompositorisch H枚hepunkt: die Ankunft seiner Schwester Felicity, das Freudianische Realit盲tsprinzip schlechthin:
Felicity war bis in die Mitte des Zimmers gekommen und stand neben mir. 禄Ich mu脽te kommen, Peter. Am Telefon h枚rtest du dich so seltsam an, und James und ich, wir hatten beide das Gef眉hl, da脽 etwas nicht stimmte. Als du die Briefe nicht beantwortetest, rief ich Edwin an. Was tust du eigentlich?芦
禄Was willst du von mir, Felicity?芦
禄Ich machte mir Sorgen um dich. Und es war nicht unbegr眉ndet, wie ich sehe! Allein der Zustand dieses Zimmers! Machst du 眉berhaupt nicht sauber?芦
Was kompositorisch au脽ergew枚hnlich gut von Christopher Priest in Der wei脽e Raum angelegt ist, und zwar im ersten Sechstel, verliert sich schnell und entpuppt sich als hei脽e Luft. Die Erz盲hlinstanz verzettelt sich im wahrsten Sinne des Wortes. Das Manuskript bleibt ungeschrieben, die Ebenen mischen sich, die Situation wird von Seite zu Seite langweiliger, beliebiger, 枚der. Die Metapher der Unsterblichkeit (durch das Ver枚ffentlichen eines Buches), durch die Beschreibung und Fixierung von Real-Existierenden zu Buchstaben, misslingt durchaus dort, wo es am Ende doch nur darum geht, dass der Protagonist Gracia nicht hei脽 genug findet, sich nicht um sie k眉mmern will, sondern lieber selbst bemuttert werden m枚chte. Als Plot leider viel viel viel zu d眉nn, obwohl die Mischung der Realit盲tsebenen ungew枚hnlich gut angelegt worden ist. Schade.
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Details 鈥� ab hier Spoilergefahr (zur Erinnerung f眉r mich):
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Inhalt: 鈼廝rotagonist: Peter Sinclair (PS), 眉ber 29 Jahre alt. Nebenfiguren: PS Gef盲hrtin, Gracia (eine Welt) - Seri Fulten (andere Welt); PS Schwester Felicity, 31 Jahre alt, (in der einen Welt) 鈥� Kalia (in der anderen).
鈼廧耻蝉补尘尘别苍蹿补蝉蝉耻苍驳/滨苍丑补濒迟蝉补苍驳补产别:
Kapitel 1-4: Peters Vater stirbt, wenig sp盲ter verliert er seinen Arbeitsplatz, dann wird ihm die Wohnung gek眉ndigt und seine Beziehung mit Gracia geht in die Br眉che. Als Krisenbew盲ltigungsstrategie k眉mmert er sich das Landhaus von einem Freund der Familie, Edwin Miller. Statt aber das Haus zu renovieren, verliert sich PS ins Trinken und Schreiben und verfertigt eine Autobiographie, bevor er diese jedoch beenden kann, st枚rt ihn seine Schwester, die sich um ihn in Sheffield k眉mmern will. 鈥�
Kapitel 5-9: Pl枚tzlich ist der Ich-Erz盲hler auf einem Schiff. Er hat in der Collagoe-Lotterie gewonnen, n盲mlich das ewige Leben, und muss deshalb von Jethra, seiner Heimatstadt, nach Muriseay reisen. Auf dem Weg lernt er Matilde kennen, die ihn aber abblitzen l盲sst. In Muriseay, im Lotterieb眉ro, lernt er Seri Fulten kennen, die ihn schlie脽lich, 眉berdr眉ssig von ihrem Job im Lotterieb眉ro, nach Collago begleitet. Peter befindet sich noch immer im Zweifel, ob er die Operation an sich durchf眉hren m枚chte, die ihm ewiges Leben (oder krebsfreies, altersfreies Leben) verspricht, denn diese w眉rde ihn sein Ged盲chtnis kosten.
Kapitel 10-11: In Sheffield erholt sich PS. Sie renovieren auch das Landhaus. Felicity f盲delt ein Wiedersehen mit Gracia an. Sie hatte eine Aff盲re mit einem Steve, aber sie vers枚hnen sich wieder und beschlie脽en zusammenzuziehen.
Kapitel 12-15: Auf dem Weg zur Klinik, auf einem Schiff namens Mulligayn. Nach seiner Ankunft, Gespr盲che in der Klinik. Nach einem medizinischen Untersuchung stellt sich heraus, dass Peter an einen Aneurysma leidet. Er entscheidet sich f眉r die Operation, die ihm das Leben nicht nur verl盲ngert, sondern rettet. Aufgrund seiner (auch in der Parallelwelt geschriebenen Autobiographie) wird die Vorbereitungszeit verk眉rzt. Laren Dobey, seine Therapeutin, und Seri stehen ihm bei, wollen ihm aber das Manuskript mit seinen Erinnerungen erst zum Lesen geben, wenn er etwas stabiler, mnemotisch und psychisch, geworden ist. Eine Entfremdung zwischen PS und Seri findet statt. Seri erz盲hlt ihm von seinem Manuskript, in diesem wird von Felicity, Gracia gesprochen.
Kapitel 16-17: In London, Gracia, die nach ihrem vorherigen Selbstmordversuch eine Therapeutin namens Jane hat, und PS, immer noch arbeitslos, streiten sich wieder. PS tagtr盲umt, w盲hrend Gracia arbeitet, von Seri, die seine sexuelle Phantasie darstellt, der Gracia nicht entspricht. Er debattiert mit Seri, macht eine Tagestour, als er in die Wohnung zur眉ckkommt, hat Gracia einen Selbstmordversuch begangen. Er sieht, dass Gracia in seinem Roman gelesen hat. Er ruft den Notarzt.
Kapitel 18-20: Langsam gewinnt er auf Collago sein Ged盲chtnis zur眉ck. Als er das erste Mal zugibt, etwas vergessen zu haben, wird er als fast geheilt eingestuft und darf sich auch au脽erhalb der Klinik freibewegen. Es wird ihm die Einsicht in sein Manuskript gew盲hrt. Er darf es lesen. Besessen von seinen Erinnerungen, verwirft er die Pl盲ne, die Seri f眉r sie beide im Sinne gehabt hat. Er verschwindet heimlich nachts.
Kapitel 21: London. Gracias Selbstmordversuch nimmt ihn mit. Er tagtr盲umt weiterhin von Seri. Er verfolgt sie, w盲hrend sie aus London herausf盲hrt. Sie finden am Strand zusammen. Sie machen eine Inseltour. Seri will ihn davon abbringen, zur眉ck zu Gracia zu gehen. Sie kehren nach London zur眉ck. Seri ungehalten.
Kapitel 22: PS kehrt zur眉ck. Gracia redet mit Jean, ihrer Therapeutin. Gracia ungehalten. PS will mit ihr 眉ber das Manuskript reden, alles klarstellen, aber Gracia sagt, dass sie nicht im Manuskript gelesen habe. Es g盲be keines. Die Seiten seien leer. Sie geht zur眉ck zu Steve, l盲sst Peter alleine in der Wohnung. Mehr als ein Jahr seit seinem Aufenthalt im Landhaus sind vergangen. Dieses Jahr ist noch nicht im Manuskript enthalten. Er gibt Seri recht, dass er sich weiter seiner Selbstbeforschung widmen muss.
Kapitel 23-24: Collago. Er reist zur眉ck nach Jethra, Richtung Norden. Auf Seevra, dem letzten Stop vor Jethra, trifft er Seri wieder. Sie will ihn davon abbringen, nach Gracia zu suchen. Er sei nun Athanasier (nach seiner Operation). Sie sind wieder in London, und in London verliert er Seri aus dem Blick.
Inhaltsangabe/Zusammenfassung (kurz): Durch eine Reihe von Ungl眉cken ger盲t Peter Sinclair in eine Lebenskrise, die ihn traumatisiert, sodass er eine Phantasiewelt erzeugt, in der Menschen von lebensbedrohlichen Krankheiten geheilt werden (wie sein Vater) und sich alle Welt um ihn sorgt und ihn aufp盲ppelt, indes geht die Erz盲hlzeit weiter und alle Versuche, seiner Schwester und seiner Lebensgef盲hrtin scheitern, ihn von seiner Phantasie zu befreien.
鈥� eine Art physisch-psychische Lebenszusammenbruch, nachgezeichnet eines sehr uninteressanten, sehr wenig elaborierten Menschen, also ein wenig Houellebecq, ein wenig Strunk, ziemlich glatt geb眉rsteter Akademiker, der eigentlich nur Sex will, umsorgt werden m枚chte, dessen Krise dadurch in Gang ger盲t, dass sein Vater stirbt, er allein steht. Er beginnt zu trinken und zu schreiben und verliert sich in seinen Schreib- und Selbstbet盲ubungsversuchen, bis er nicht mehr zwischen Realit盲t und Phantasie unterscheiden kann. Als Thema sehr enervierend aufgearbeitet, aber z盲h, inhaltlich langweilig geschrieben, ohne Ereignis, ohne Schreibgrund, ohne rote Linie, eine detaillierte Lebensbeschreibung eines sehr ereignislosen Lebens. Ein wenig wie 鈥濫chtzeitalter鈥� von Tonio Schachinger. --> 1 Stern
Form: Sprache einigerma脽en fl眉ssig, einigerma脽en einfallsreiche Eigennamen, professionell, stereotypisch, Genresprache. Sprache als reines Vehikel, aber nicht unangenehm, keine zu krassen Wiederholungen, keine falsche Konjunktionen, Konstruktionen, Bem眉hen um gewundene, eing盲ngige S盲tze. --> 2 Sterne
贰谤锄盲丑濒蝉迟颈尘尘别: Ich-Erz盲hlinstanz, unsituiert, zwischen zwei Welten, die ineinander 眉bergehen. Ziemlich unklar, wo welche Welt beginnt, wo welche Welt aufh枚rt, aber Reflexion, selbstkritisch, hierdurch anf盲nglich sehr 眉berzeugend, und auch glaubw眉rdig. Als Erz盲hlinstanz und zusammenbrechendes Ich symptomatisch durchexerziert. Aber eben: unsituiert, und daher auch unzuverl盲ssig. --> 3 Sterne
Komposition: Durch die Ereignislosigkeit, gibt es keine inhaltliche Substanz, die formale Erz盲hlweise bricht auseinander. Ein etwas undurchsichtiges, neurotisches Puzzle. --> 1 Stern
Leseerlebnis: Anf盲nglich sehr mitrei脽end, die Krise, sehr 眉berzeugend, der R眉ckzugsort, der Versuch, sich wieder einzufangen, nachdem alles in die Br眉che gegangen ist. Dann das Auftauchen der Schwester, Riss in der Realit盲t. Sehr gelungen, nun pl枚tzlich, wovon l盲uft die Figur eigentlich weg? Ab diesem Zeitpunkt (erstes Sechstel), statt eine Substanz einzul枚sen, flieht die Erz盲hlung in die Phantasiewelt, ziehende, 盲tzend lange Beschreibung, die nicht 眉berzeugen, die langweilen, v枚llig neue Figuren 鈥� Zerst枚rung des Buches und des Lesegenusses. Nur noch anstrengend. --> 1 Stern
September 13, 2018
The Affirmation starts out as a manic* exploration of the possible existence of truth in fiction and how the writing and rewriting of autobiography in increasingly veiled and distanced terms reaches a vanishing point where it suddenly becomes 'fiction' and all the attendant consequences therein: people, places, and events from 'reality' not merely transposed鈥攂ut transformed鈥攜et retaining the shimmer of familiarity. It explodes* from there into a mad* identity quest mapped out through a ragged manuscript, a memory-mining expedition, and a split-level view of relationships and travel with the destination an archipelago comprised of seemingly endless numbers of islands stretching out toward the horizon. A fundamental struggle occurs over what is real and what is imagined:
It scared me to know there was this dichotomy in the perceived world, as if to stop believing it could cause the ship to vanish beneath me.And what of those islands...
To her, each island represented a different facet of her personality, each one vested in her a sense of identity. She was incomplete without islands, she was spread across the sea.*While Priest's prose is measured鈥攕ome may even say restrained鈥攖he pacing and depth of the story fully earn these terms.
March 27, 2018
Introduction
Plot
Characters
World
Conclusion and Questions
What about Immortality?
Can you really trust your memory? Can you trust anything?
Solipsism听is the听philosophical听idea that only one's own听mind听is sure to exist. It proposes that the听knowledge听of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the听external world听and听other minds听cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
TL;DR : The Affirmation by Christopher Priest is one of the greatest things I've ever experienced. It's fascinating, mind-bending and twisted. By the time you finish reading it, you'll be looking at everything differently. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes to think and question things.
Thank you for reading!
The Affirmation by Christopher Priest is one of the greatest books I've ever read. I read this book a couple of days ago but hadn't been able to write a review because I was unable to think straight. This book has seriously messed with my mind.
I have never been a huge fan of simple and straightforward plots. Most of my favourite movies are filled with twisted, complicated plotlines and confusing narratives but it's a bit easier to create such effects on screen where you have a variety of tools available. But to do that using written words is a much more difficult task but Christopher Priest does this exceptionally and the result is nothing short of mind-bending.
The following quote captures the essence of this extraordinary book better than anything else ever could -
"From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality."
- Ernest Hemingway
If you've read this book you'd truly understand and appreciate how apt this quote is for this particular book.
Plot
The story is told in first person and in the very early parts of the book, Peter Sinclair establishes himself as a somewhat unreliable narrator. Whether this is because of two (or three?) worlds colliding and merging into each other or because of the state of his mind is unclear.
The story begins with Peter telling us that "Already there is an uncertainty, and my sureness recedes." And he's not lying.
Peter is twenty-nine years old (or is he?) and has recently lost his father, his job, his apartment and his girlfriend (they broke up). All this happen in a matter of weeks, crushing and destroying him.
Most people experience these unfortunate events in their lives but to go through them all at the same time must truly be devastating.
In his intentions of finding himself and finding some meaning to his life, he decides to write an autobiography which only leads to more uncertainty and confusion. The narration is somewhat flat but that only helps the book in later parts. The prose is written in a way that you believe what is being said and this makes it even more baffling when things are questioned or disproved.
Characters
The characters are extremely well created and realistic. Even the characters who might or might not be real are as well rounded as the other ones.
The best part about the characters is probably the fact that every character has a personality which makes them unique as they express different emotions and exhibit different sides of themselves.
But the narrator is not without bias towards the characters and that bias usually draws you in as the biases become your own.
Before you know, it's not only Peter who distrusts the other characters, it's you who distrust them. This doesn't stop the characters from coming across to you, making you believe things and question them at the same time.
World
This is probably the most complex part of the book. There are more than a singular world and both of them appear to be equally real. But are they? We might never truly know. There is an alternate reality set inside the reality we know to be true.
One of the worlds is the world with which we're quite familiar - London.
The other world is a fascinating, dream-like world aptly named as Dream Archipelago, a seemingly endless number of islands, full of endless possibilities.
Both of these worlds are described in flat, matter-of-fact manner, making you believe in both of them and the yet reader ends up questioning the existence of both of them.
Conclusion and Questions
Some sci-fi novels are filled with aliens, high-tech weapons, time travel and such. The Affirmation, however, deals with much grandeur things. It poses questions about (but not limited to) the reliability of one's memory, the meaning of life, and the morality of immortality.
What about Immortality?
Would you want to be immortal if you could, knowing that everyone you love will die and you will be forever alone? Is there any meaning to such a life? Do you deserve to be immortal? Would you do something worthwhile with your never-ending life or would it be just a waste?
Let's talk about something a lot more personal. Something that you always rely on and consider the utmost truth - Memory
Can you really trust your memory? Can you trust anything?
How reliable is your own memory? Do you remember the things which happened in your childhood? We always seem so sure about the things we witnessed or experienced when we were children. We never question them, do we? And yet there are moments when you're talking to your parents or elders and they give you a somewhat different account of the events. Does that mean that you made things up? Our memories are a part of us. They are what shapes us and define us. But it's also true that the memories depend on your perception of the events and your senses which might be affected by a number of reasons.
If the things you remember from your childhood are flawed, what's to say that everything else isn't? What's to say that everything else you remember is correct? How do you even know who you really are?
These are only a few of the questions this remarkable book made me ask and to say that I can never see my life in the same way will be a massive understatement.
Nothing is certain. Half your life could be a figment of your imagination for all you know. Memory is unreliable and so are the people you remember.
While writing this entire review, I couldn't help but think of Solipsism.
Solipsism听is the听philosophical听idea that only one's own听mind听is sure to exist. It proposes that the听knowledge听of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the听external world听and听other minds听cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
But what of your own mind? Is the knowledge we have of our own lives reliable? Can it be trusted?
TL;DR : The Affirmation by Christopher Priest is one of the greatest things I've ever experienced. It's fascinating, mind-bending and twisted. By the time you finish reading it, you'll be looking at everything differently. I highly recommend it to everyone who likes to think and question things.
Note: This book is not for people who like their books to be simple. Despite not being long, this won't be a quick read because the ideas are simply too big.
Thank you for reading!
October 24, 2009
of all the writers i don't like, christopher priest is probably my favorite. i first found him through his book , which was on david pringle's top 100 sci-fi books of all time list (and has since been re-released by nyrb books, one of their only sf titles). that was a dazzlingly smart book about a warped world where civilization was driven around on rails to stay at the center of a kind of gravity well or something, i don't know, told in a kind of detached, reticent manner that didn't seem to really add up to a lot. then i read , which was pretty much the same, except about an amnesia victim and an underground network of invisible people, and now this book, about a grief-stricken man who starts writing an autobiography which mutates into a novel and then suddenly he wins a ticket in a lottery where the prize is immortality and has to go off to "the islands" to have the procedure done...
this is a guy with a lot of ideas. a lot of really cool ideas! but they don't ever really seem to pay off.
he also wrote the book , which was turned into the movie of the same name, wherein david bowie played nicola tesla and scarlett johansson, um, appeared. i haven't read that one yet. though i probably will, and not not really like it all that much.
he reminds me a lot of . extremely intelligent, well-read, possessed of vast imaginative capabilities, but cold and removed in a british kind of way. no sense of humor, not much for people. and not interested in resolving his stories. still, though... there's something there that just keeps me coming back.
this is a guy with a lot of ideas. a lot of really cool ideas! but they don't ever really seem to pay off.
he also wrote the book , which was turned into the movie of the same name, wherein david bowie played nicola tesla and scarlett johansson, um, appeared. i haven't read that one yet. though i probably will, and not not really like it all that much.
he reminds me a lot of . extremely intelligent, well-read, possessed of vast imaginative capabilities, but cold and removed in a british kind of way. no sense of humor, not much for people. and not interested in resolving his stories. still, though... there's something there that just keeps me coming back.
April 17, 2017
I love crazy ambiguous puzzling books, and this is definitely one of them. By the time I was 75% through, I was racing to the end to see how all the pieces fell into place. However, my thought as I read the last sentence was "huh?" rather than "ah ha!". That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it just means that I have to do a bit more thinking after closing the last page. Read some other reviews and talk to other people who have read this book. The first 3/4 of the book was 4 stars, but by the end I felt it was in the 3 star range. So, I'll split the difference and go with 3.5 for the time being. I'm giving it a straight 4 stars after talking about it a bit.
This is the first book in 's loose series of books called Dream Archipelago, so it's interesting to see where that term originates within this series of books and I'm curious how the next book will be set up.
This is the first book in 's loose series of books called Dream Archipelago, so it's interesting to see where that term originates within this series of books and I'm curious how the next book will be set up.
November 28, 2019
A brilliant, elegantly written, deeply introspective inside view of a full on schizophrenic psychotic break. As others have noted, this is really a psychological thriller more than sci-fi as such.
Priest takes the notion of the unreliable narrator to new extremes, leaving one confused and a bit crazy as the protagonist's worlds bleed into each other, sometimes subtly, sometimes jarringly. He methodically tears apart and reconstructs the notion of memory as identity, i.e. "I am what I remember". It's not nearly as gloomy or disturbing as it could have been, feeling more like an odyssey of the mind, an exploration of self and reality.
Priest takes the notion of the unreliable narrator to new extremes, leaving one confused and a bit crazy as the protagonist's worlds bleed into each other, sometimes subtly, sometimes jarringly. He methodically tears apart and reconstructs the notion of memory as identity, i.e. "I am what I remember". It's not nearly as gloomy or disturbing as it could have been, feeling more like an odyssey of the mind, an exploration of self and reality.
June 24, 2023
Oh. My. God.
This was the weirdest, most surreal reading experience I have ever had.
This novel was written just for me. I know it. Don't try to tell me otherwise.
And reading it, I felt I was reading myself and I had to get to the ending of the book to find out the ending of my own story, but at the same time I was so fearful, because do I really want to know the ending of my story? Will reading it change the middle of my story? or will it erase everything that came before so I can write the new version on that blank white page?
I'm so lost. And never felt happier to be lost.
This was the weirdest, most surreal reading experience I have ever had.
This novel was written just for me. I know it. Don't try to tell me otherwise.
And reading it, I felt I was reading myself and I had to get to the ending of the book to find out the ending of my own story, but at the same time I was so fearful, because do I really want to know the ending of my story? Will reading it change the middle of my story? or will it erase everything that came before so I can write the new version on that blank white page?
I'm so lost. And never felt happier to be lost.
February 3, 2024
Otra de mis novelas favoritas que recomiendo a todo el mundo. En esta novela de ciencia ficci贸n un hombre decide escribir un diario, pero cambiando los nombres de sus conocidos y del lugar donde vive para evitar problemas. De pronto descubre que est谩 escribiendo un diario de vida porque se someti贸 a un tratamiento para ser inmortal, pero que implic贸 perder la memoria. En este cruce de fantas铆a y realidad, nunca estamos seguros de qui茅n escribe el diario hasta el final. Priest escribe excelente, como siempre.
Este libro, uno de mis favoritos, sobre recuerdos, realidad y el proceso terap茅utico de la escritura:
鈥淟as met谩foras ten铆an vida, y en ellas estaba definida mi identidad鈥�
鈥淒e ciertas cosas al menos estoy seguro.
Me llamo Peter Sinclair, soy ingl茅s y tengo, o ten铆a, veintinueve a帽os. Ya aqu铆 hay una incertidumbre, y mi seguridad vacila. La edad es una variable: ya no tengo veintinueve a帽os鈥�
Conoc铆 a Christopher Priest, gracias, una vez m谩s, a la editorial Minotauro de Porr煤a y se transform贸 en uno de mis autores favoritos. Quiz谩s no es tan conocido en espa帽ol, pero en los 煤ltimos a帽os gracias a pel铆culas como 鈥淓l gran truco鈥� basada en su libro , quiz谩s un poco m谩s. Tiene libros excelentes como (colecci贸n de cuentos), (una novela de terror sicol贸gico muy inquietante) y (donde volvemos a la ciencia ficci贸n, con una ciudad que se mueve), entre otros.
Esta novela est谩 estructurada de manera muy sencilla, pero a medida que nos vamos adentrando en la historia vamos descubriendo y sospechando cosas. En la primera parte, leemos c贸mo Peter Sinclair, nuestro protagonista, intenta escribir un diario de vida para poner algo de orden en la situaci贸n en la que se encuentra. Mucho de lo que describe al comienzo es una depresi贸n cl铆nica y es imposible dejar de pensar que el escribir sobre eso form贸 parte de un proceso terap茅utico del cual somos parte tambi茅n al leer. Esta parte se ha usado como ejemplo para describir el proceso de escritura, con todas las dificultades que implica. As铆, lo vemos atravesar distintas experiencias vitales: el desamor y la posibilidad de enamorarse nuevamente, la b煤squeda de su identidad, el trabajo creativo, el recontruirse desde un fracaso laboral, pero a medida que avanza la historia nos damos cuenta que Peter escribe sobre un lugar 鈥渋maginario鈥�: El Archipi茅lago del Sue帽o, donde existe una loter铆a que otorga la posibilidad de someterse a un tratamiento (Atanasia) que permite borrar tus recuerdos, pero te hace inmortal. Peter gana esta loter铆a y se somete al procedimiento, pero tiene en sus manos el diario de sus recuerdos que habla de su vida en Londres, no en el Archipi茅lago.
La publicidad de la loter铆a de la Atanasia se plantea como algo permanente e invasivo durante toda la novela (ac谩 es imposible no hacer el paralelo con la publicidad eterna de la 鈥渓oter铆a de los proles鈥� en 鈥�1984鈥�). Las dos funcionan como una esperanza, un cambio de vida que se ve mon贸tona y muy dura. Ac谩 Peter (como Peter Pan) queda 鈥渇ijado鈥� en la edad (por eso la insistencia al comenzar el diario en decir que tiene 29 a帽os), no envejecer谩 m谩s gracias al procedimiento, pero esta decisi贸n tambi茅n lo aisla de todo contacto humano, ya que las dem谩s personas que conoce, envejecer谩n y morir谩n. Aqu铆 vemos la importancia de los recuerdos en construirnos como personas. Si el proceso te hace inmortal pero obliga a que borres tus recuerdos, 驴sigues siendo la misma persona? 驴Porqu茅 alguien querr铆a borrar todos sus recuerdos? (por eso puedo imaginar que Peter escribe su diario viviendo un intenso duelo).
Hay muchas explicaciones para la situaci贸n de Peter en la novela, pero no podemos olvidar que estamos leyendo la descripci贸n de una realidad cuando el narrador principal no es fiable, pues describe una cosa y luego descubrimos por los otros personajes de la novela que esta realidad podr铆a ser distinta. La insistencia en el color blanco, hace a muchos pensar que Peter est谩 en un hospital (incluso en un hospital siqui谩trico por el shock que ha tenido) y quiz谩s resulta interesante pensar que toda la fantas铆a del archipi茅lago del Sue帽o y de la atanasia ha sido una forma de lidiar con el trauma y la pena y es una manera que tiene el cerebro de recuperarse a s铆 mismo. De esta forma, no podemos dar una realidad por cierta y la otra por falsa, porque ambas en cierta medida, son reflejos de la persona que es Peter (que est谩 en permanente construci贸n, como una identidad que no es fija y que siempre evoluciona).
Ya mencionamos que podemos leer la novela como la met谩fora de un duelo. Ya sea por el amor perdido, por la infancia (el paso desde la juventud a la madurez) y por la persona que era Peter antes de comenzar su viaje (y perder la memoria) en el Archipi茅lago del Sue帽o. Me gusta que Priest haga la diferencia no s贸lo entre la realidad y ficci贸n, sino tambi茅n entre sue帽o y vigilia. Otro de los ejes en los que se mueve la novela, es entre el campo (adonde llega Peter a curarse) y la ciudad (que abandona porque le resulta agobiante). Tambi茅n entre realidad y realidad virtual: podemos imaginarnos el diario de vida que lleva Peter como un alter ego como los que construimos en instagram o facebook, una vida distinta a la que llevamos, la vida que quiz谩s querr铆amos llevar y que ser谩 una 鈥渧ida鈥� que quedar谩 cuando muramos, un poco lo que le pasa a Peter cuando se somete a la atanasia.
De esta manera, la estructura de la novela nos recuerda a 鈥淟a noche boca arriba鈥� de Cort谩zar y a todas las estructuras narrativas que est谩n recreadas a partir de la famosa historia tao铆sta: 鈥淐huang Tzu so帽贸 que era una mariposa. Al despertar ignoraba si era Tzu que hab铆a so帽ado que era una mariposa o si era una mariposa y estaba so帽ando que era Tzu鈥�. La cita Borges en su 鈥淎ntolog铆a de la literatura fant谩stica鈥� y podemos pensar que tambi茅n es una inspiraci贸n para otro cuento estupendo de Cort谩zar: 鈥淐ontinuidad de los parques鈥�.
Una soluci贸n es pensar que ambos mundos puedan coexistir porque Peter los recuerda a ambos y en cierta medida enlaza el paso de la ni帽ez/juventud a la adultez (que puedo citar en obras como 鈥淯n puente hacia Terabithia鈥�), sin que significa dejar la fantas铆a atr谩s. Cual obra de MC Escher podemos apreciar una escena (en este caso la vida de Peter) de dos maneras distintas y ninguna de esas dos es la 鈥渧erdadera鈥�. Peter, a trav茅s de la escritura y sus recuerdos toma conciencia que en el proceso de construir su identidad lo que decide ser es lo que prima. Es una afirmaci贸n, es decir s铆 a la vida (podemos entenderlo as铆 como alguien que logra recuperarse de una gran depresi贸n o un gran trauma, que vuelve a la vida: 鈥淰e铆a la atanasia como una negaci贸n de la vida, cuando en realidad era una afirmaci贸n鈥�).
Cada vez que leo el libro elijo una de las vidas de Peter, en Londres o en el Archip铆elago del Sue帽o. A veces pienso que el proceso para ser inmortal (producto de ganar la loter铆a), es una forma muy complicada de procesar la culpa y la pena, donde se crea toda esta historia del Archipi茅lago para no recordar, al menos la vida que m谩s le duele. Otras veces pienso en la soluci贸n m谩s evidente: Peter est谩 loco y describe delirios, confundiendo la realidad con el mundo de fantas铆a que imagin贸. Y otras veces, pienso que Peter no se llama Peter y est谩 escribiendo sobre una ciudad misteriosa llamada Londres 馃檪
Este libro, uno de mis favoritos, sobre recuerdos, realidad y el proceso terap茅utico de la escritura:
鈥淟as met谩foras ten铆an vida, y en ellas estaba definida mi identidad鈥�
鈥淒e ciertas cosas al menos estoy seguro.
Me llamo Peter Sinclair, soy ingl茅s y tengo, o ten铆a, veintinueve a帽os. Ya aqu铆 hay una incertidumbre, y mi seguridad vacila. La edad es una variable: ya no tengo veintinueve a帽os鈥�
Conoc铆 a Christopher Priest, gracias, una vez m谩s, a la editorial Minotauro de Porr煤a y se transform贸 en uno de mis autores favoritos. Quiz谩s no es tan conocido en espa帽ol, pero en los 煤ltimos a帽os gracias a pel铆culas como 鈥淓l gran truco鈥� basada en su libro , quiz谩s un poco m谩s. Tiene libros excelentes como (colecci贸n de cuentos), (una novela de terror sicol贸gico muy inquietante) y (donde volvemos a la ciencia ficci贸n, con una ciudad que se mueve), entre otros.
Esta novela est谩 estructurada de manera muy sencilla, pero a medida que nos vamos adentrando en la historia vamos descubriendo y sospechando cosas. En la primera parte, leemos c贸mo Peter Sinclair, nuestro protagonista, intenta escribir un diario de vida para poner algo de orden en la situaci贸n en la que se encuentra. Mucho de lo que describe al comienzo es una depresi贸n cl铆nica y es imposible dejar de pensar que el escribir sobre eso form贸 parte de un proceso terap茅utico del cual somos parte tambi茅n al leer. Esta parte se ha usado como ejemplo para describir el proceso de escritura, con todas las dificultades que implica. As铆, lo vemos atravesar distintas experiencias vitales: el desamor y la posibilidad de enamorarse nuevamente, la b煤squeda de su identidad, el trabajo creativo, el recontruirse desde un fracaso laboral, pero a medida que avanza la historia nos damos cuenta que Peter escribe sobre un lugar 鈥渋maginario鈥�: El Archipi茅lago del Sue帽o, donde existe una loter铆a que otorga la posibilidad de someterse a un tratamiento (Atanasia) que permite borrar tus recuerdos, pero te hace inmortal. Peter gana esta loter铆a y se somete al procedimiento, pero tiene en sus manos el diario de sus recuerdos que habla de su vida en Londres, no en el Archipi茅lago.
La publicidad de la loter铆a de la Atanasia se plantea como algo permanente e invasivo durante toda la novela (ac谩 es imposible no hacer el paralelo con la publicidad eterna de la 鈥渓oter铆a de los proles鈥� en 鈥�1984鈥�). Las dos funcionan como una esperanza, un cambio de vida que se ve mon贸tona y muy dura. Ac谩 Peter (como Peter Pan) queda 鈥渇ijado鈥� en la edad (por eso la insistencia al comenzar el diario en decir que tiene 29 a帽os), no envejecer谩 m谩s gracias al procedimiento, pero esta decisi贸n tambi茅n lo aisla de todo contacto humano, ya que las dem谩s personas que conoce, envejecer谩n y morir谩n. Aqu铆 vemos la importancia de los recuerdos en construirnos como personas. Si el proceso te hace inmortal pero obliga a que borres tus recuerdos, 驴sigues siendo la misma persona? 驴Porqu茅 alguien querr铆a borrar todos sus recuerdos? (por eso puedo imaginar que Peter escribe su diario viviendo un intenso duelo).
Hay muchas explicaciones para la situaci贸n de Peter en la novela, pero no podemos olvidar que estamos leyendo la descripci贸n de una realidad cuando el narrador principal no es fiable, pues describe una cosa y luego descubrimos por los otros personajes de la novela que esta realidad podr铆a ser distinta. La insistencia en el color blanco, hace a muchos pensar que Peter est谩 en un hospital (incluso en un hospital siqui谩trico por el shock que ha tenido) y quiz谩s resulta interesante pensar que toda la fantas铆a del archipi茅lago del Sue帽o y de la atanasia ha sido una forma de lidiar con el trauma y la pena y es una manera que tiene el cerebro de recuperarse a s铆 mismo. De esta forma, no podemos dar una realidad por cierta y la otra por falsa, porque ambas en cierta medida, son reflejos de la persona que es Peter (que est谩 en permanente construci贸n, como una identidad que no es fija y que siempre evoluciona).
Ya mencionamos que podemos leer la novela como la met谩fora de un duelo. Ya sea por el amor perdido, por la infancia (el paso desde la juventud a la madurez) y por la persona que era Peter antes de comenzar su viaje (y perder la memoria) en el Archipi茅lago del Sue帽o. Me gusta que Priest haga la diferencia no s贸lo entre la realidad y ficci贸n, sino tambi茅n entre sue帽o y vigilia. Otro de los ejes en los que se mueve la novela, es entre el campo (adonde llega Peter a curarse) y la ciudad (que abandona porque le resulta agobiante). Tambi茅n entre realidad y realidad virtual: podemos imaginarnos el diario de vida que lleva Peter como un alter ego como los que construimos en instagram o facebook, una vida distinta a la que llevamos, la vida que quiz谩s querr铆amos llevar y que ser谩 una 鈥渧ida鈥� que quedar谩 cuando muramos, un poco lo que le pasa a Peter cuando se somete a la atanasia.
De esta manera, la estructura de la novela nos recuerda a 鈥淟a noche boca arriba鈥� de Cort谩zar y a todas las estructuras narrativas que est谩n recreadas a partir de la famosa historia tao铆sta: 鈥淐huang Tzu so帽贸 que era una mariposa. Al despertar ignoraba si era Tzu que hab铆a so帽ado que era una mariposa o si era una mariposa y estaba so帽ando que era Tzu鈥�. La cita Borges en su 鈥淎ntolog铆a de la literatura fant谩stica鈥� y podemos pensar que tambi茅n es una inspiraci贸n para otro cuento estupendo de Cort谩zar: 鈥淐ontinuidad de los parques鈥�.
Una soluci贸n es pensar que ambos mundos puedan coexistir porque Peter los recuerda a ambos y en cierta medida enlaza el paso de la ni帽ez/juventud a la adultez (que puedo citar en obras como 鈥淯n puente hacia Terabithia鈥�), sin que significa dejar la fantas铆a atr谩s. Cual obra de MC Escher podemos apreciar una escena (en este caso la vida de Peter) de dos maneras distintas y ninguna de esas dos es la 鈥渧erdadera鈥�. Peter, a trav茅s de la escritura y sus recuerdos toma conciencia que en el proceso de construir su identidad lo que decide ser es lo que prima. Es una afirmaci贸n, es decir s铆 a la vida (podemos entenderlo as铆 como alguien que logra recuperarse de una gran depresi贸n o un gran trauma, que vuelve a la vida: 鈥淰e铆a la atanasia como una negaci贸n de la vida, cuando en realidad era una afirmaci贸n鈥�).
Cada vez que leo el libro elijo una de las vidas de Peter, en Londres o en el Archip铆elago del Sue帽o. A veces pienso que el proceso para ser inmortal (producto de ganar la loter铆a), es una forma muy complicada de procesar la culpa y la pena, donde se crea toda esta historia del Archipi茅lago para no recordar, al menos la vida que m谩s le duele. Otras veces pienso en la soluci贸n m谩s evidente: Peter est谩 loco y describe delirios, confundiendo la realidad con el mundo de fantas铆a que imagin贸. Y otras veces, pienso que Peter no se llama Peter y est谩 escribiendo sobre una ciudad misteriosa llamada Londres 馃檪
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 2, 2010
Having lost his father, job, home, and relationship, all in quick succession, Peter Sinclair is at his lowest ebb. He takes on some work helping to renovate a friend鈥檚 country cottage; inspired by his ability to turn his vision for one of the room鈥檚 into reality, Peter resolves to write his autobiography, in the hope that, by doing so, he can make some sense of his life. After trying various approaches, he decides that the best way to achieve what he wants is to write metaphorically about his life; it won鈥檛 be what 鈥榓ctually鈥� happened, but it will attain (what Peter sees as) the 鈥榟igher truth鈥� of capturing what the events of his twenty-nine years meant to him.
So, Peter creates an alternative version of himself, with the same name, but living in an imaginary world, and all the key people in his life given different names 鈥� and writes this Peter鈥檚 life story to represent the 鈥榟igher truth鈥� of his won. Peter has almost completed the manuscript when he is interrupted by the arrival of his estranged sister, Felicity, and is forced to break off his work mid-sentence.
All this happens in the first four chapters of The Affirmation; the fifth is again narrated by Peter Sinclair (his voice is recognisably the same), but it鈥檚 the Peter of the imaginary world (a world, incidentally, also used by Priest as the setting for his 鈥楧ream Archipelago鈥� stories), who is sailing south to a clinic, having won a lottery to undergo a medical procedure which will effectively confer immortality on him. Okay, one supposes, this must be an extract from the 鈥榬eal鈥� Peter鈥檚 manuscript 鈥� but, no: the Peter in this world has also written a fictionalised autobiography; and the events of this strand subtly contradict what we know of the other Peter鈥檚 manuscript. One is left with no option but to conclude that the 鈥榠maginary鈥� world has its own valid reality.
And so, as the novel continues, the two realities shift back and forth, with the reader never allowed to pin down one of them as being more real than the other. Even the nature of the text presented to us is uncertain: we never knowingly get to read any of the manuscripts referred to, so what exactly is the testimony that we鈥檙e reading? And we only know Peter Sinclair through his words on the page, so what can we trust? This is what Priest is so good at: undermining our expectations, hiding the truth, making the realities of his stories profoundly uncertain.
There are imaginative pleasures a-plenty in The Affirmation, then; but the novel also works on other levels. It鈥檚 a fine meditation on memory, and how it can make us who we are. Peter believes that memory is central to the creation of identity, but he also knows how fallible our memories can be; this is played out in several different ways in the novel, including a quite literal one in the shape of the athanasia treatment 鈥� a side effect of the procedure is to erase patients鈥� memories; they鈥檙e required to complete a questionnaire beforehand, which will be used to reconstruct their memories 鈥� but can they possibly be the same people afterwards?
The Affirmation is also an acute portrayal of a man in a fragile mental state (though, as noted, it resists being interpreted as solely a tale of delusion). We discover early on that Peter hasn鈥檛 actually painted his 鈥榳hite room鈥� at all (though he imagines it painted, and it鈥檚 that 鈥榟igher truth鈥�, he insists, that really matters); this is only one of the first indications that the world viewed through Peter鈥檚 eyes may not be what a third party would see. This leads the protagonist into difficulties relating to other people. For example, Peter鈥檚 ideas of what his girlfriends (in both worlds) are like don鈥檛 reflect the reality, which puts a strain on his relationships; the way Priest reveals the ramifications of this is simply superb.
I鈥檝e read three of Chris Priest鈥檚 novels now, and they have all been excellent. Seriously, if you have yet to read him, you鈥檙e missing out. As for me, I doubt it will be long before I read another of his books, and I very much look forward to doing so.
So, Peter creates an alternative version of himself, with the same name, but living in an imaginary world, and all the key people in his life given different names 鈥� and writes this Peter鈥檚 life story to represent the 鈥榟igher truth鈥� of his won. Peter has almost completed the manuscript when he is interrupted by the arrival of his estranged sister, Felicity, and is forced to break off his work mid-sentence.
All this happens in the first four chapters of The Affirmation; the fifth is again narrated by Peter Sinclair (his voice is recognisably the same), but it鈥檚 the Peter of the imaginary world (a world, incidentally, also used by Priest as the setting for his 鈥楧ream Archipelago鈥� stories), who is sailing south to a clinic, having won a lottery to undergo a medical procedure which will effectively confer immortality on him. Okay, one supposes, this must be an extract from the 鈥榬eal鈥� Peter鈥檚 manuscript 鈥� but, no: the Peter in this world has also written a fictionalised autobiography; and the events of this strand subtly contradict what we know of the other Peter鈥檚 manuscript. One is left with no option but to conclude that the 鈥榠maginary鈥� world has its own valid reality.
And so, as the novel continues, the two realities shift back and forth, with the reader never allowed to pin down one of them as being more real than the other. Even the nature of the text presented to us is uncertain: we never knowingly get to read any of the manuscripts referred to, so what exactly is the testimony that we鈥檙e reading? And we only know Peter Sinclair through his words on the page, so what can we trust? This is what Priest is so good at: undermining our expectations, hiding the truth, making the realities of his stories profoundly uncertain.
There are imaginative pleasures a-plenty in The Affirmation, then; but the novel also works on other levels. It鈥檚 a fine meditation on memory, and how it can make us who we are. Peter believes that memory is central to the creation of identity, but he also knows how fallible our memories can be; this is played out in several different ways in the novel, including a quite literal one in the shape of the athanasia treatment 鈥� a side effect of the procedure is to erase patients鈥� memories; they鈥檙e required to complete a questionnaire beforehand, which will be used to reconstruct their memories 鈥� but can they possibly be the same people afterwards?
The Affirmation is also an acute portrayal of a man in a fragile mental state (though, as noted, it resists being interpreted as solely a tale of delusion). We discover early on that Peter hasn鈥檛 actually painted his 鈥榳hite room鈥� at all (though he imagines it painted, and it鈥檚 that 鈥榟igher truth鈥�, he insists, that really matters); this is only one of the first indications that the world viewed through Peter鈥檚 eyes may not be what a third party would see. This leads the protagonist into difficulties relating to other people. For example, Peter鈥檚 ideas of what his girlfriends (in both worlds) are like don鈥檛 reflect the reality, which puts a strain on his relationships; the way Priest reveals the ramifications of this is simply superb.
I鈥檝e read three of Chris Priest鈥檚 novels now, and they have all been excellent. Seriously, if you have yet to read him, you鈥檙e missing out. As for me, I doubt it will be long before I read another of his books, and I very much look forward to doing so.
February 16, 2016
This is one of those books I picked up in clearance for no reason other than it was cheap and I knew the author's name because he wrote which later become a Christopher Nolan movie (RIP David Bowie). And also this is one bad-ass cover with that face-stripey thing going on.
Not knowing anything about a story is actually one of my favorite things when I read, because I like not having any real expectations. The back of the book doesn't give a lot of information, though I found it appealing that the protag here, Peter Sinclair, sets out to write an autobiography after his life otherwise falls apart, but said autobiography winds up being sort of a fantasy version. What strikes me about that concept is that, really, aren't autobiographies just another form of fantasy? Priest delves into the idea of memory and self, two things I'm already sort of obsessed with in similar ways, so I appreciated that slant to the story.
And also unreliable narrators are the best.
As Sinclair's story unfolds, the reader isn't entirely sure which version is actually reality. Time sort of flips inside of itself, characters and places merge and separate, and there's still this underlying question as to what (and who) is actually real and what (and who) is just figments of Sinclair's imagination.
This is a short book, and while the beginning is sort of slow and meander-y, pretty soon I found myself wanting to know how it ends. I had difficulty connecting to all of the characters, not just because they are not redeemable characters, but just because I felt Priest kept them all at arm's length for some reason that didn't seem to work for the story. But that's strangely a minor complaint; otherwise I enjoyed this book quite a bit and I'm glad I read it without knowing anything about it.
Not knowing anything about a story is actually one of my favorite things when I read, because I like not having any real expectations. The back of the book doesn't give a lot of information, though I found it appealing that the protag here, Peter Sinclair, sets out to write an autobiography after his life otherwise falls apart, but said autobiography winds up being sort of a fantasy version. What strikes me about that concept is that, really, aren't autobiographies just another form of fantasy? Priest delves into the idea of memory and self, two things I'm already sort of obsessed with in similar ways, so I appreciated that slant to the story.
And also unreliable narrators are the best.
As Sinclair's story unfolds, the reader isn't entirely sure which version is actually reality. Time sort of flips inside of itself, characters and places merge and separate, and there's still this underlying question as to what (and who) is actually real and what (and who) is just figments of Sinclair's imagination.
This is a short book, and while the beginning is sort of slow and meander-y, pretty soon I found myself wanting to know how it ends. I had difficulty connecting to all of the characters, not just because they are not redeemable characters, but just because I felt Priest kept them all at arm's length for some reason that didn't seem to work for the story. But that's strangely a minor complaint; otherwise I enjoyed this book quite a bit and I'm glad I read it without knowing anything about it.
"Memory is continuity too, a sense of identity and place and consequence. I am what I am because I can remember how I became it."p144
April 11, 2017
This was a very engrossing book but it was also very confusing. And that is all I will say because I don't want to spoil something.
April 30, 2017
Okay, I take it back, it was pleasantly schizophrenic.
February 21, 2024
The Affirmation - Christopher Priest
亘賷鬲乇 爻賳賰賱賷乇 禺爻乇 賰賱 卮賷亍 鬲賯乇賷亘賸丕- 賵丕賱丿賴 賵毓賲賱賴 賵丨亘賷亘鬲賴 賵賱賲 賷鬲亘賯 賱賴 廿賱丕 卮賯賷賯丞 亘毓賷丿丞 毓賳賴貙 賲爻賰賵賳賸丕 亘丕賱賮噩賷毓丞 賵丕賱賮卮賱 賷丨丕賵賱 賰鬲丕亘丞 爻賷乇丞 匕丕鬲賷丞貙 賵賱賰賳 爻乇毓丕賳 賲丕 鬲亘丿賵 丕賱爻賷乇丞 爻賷乇丞 乇噩賱 丌禺乇 鬲賲丕賲賸丕 賵賮賷 毓丕賱賲 賲鬲禺賷賱 亘丕賱賰丕賲賱貙 賵賲賳 鬲亘丿兀 賲丨丕賵賱丕鬲賴 -賵賲丨丕賵賱丕鬲賳丕 賲毓賴貙 賱賮氐賱 丕賱毓丕賱賲賷賳 毓賳 亘毓囟.
乇賵丕賷丞 匕賰賷丞 賮賱爻賮賷丞 賵賲丿賴卮丞鈥� 亘丨孬 毓賳 丕賱賴賵賷丞 丕賱卮禺氐賷丞 賵丕賱匕丕鬲 亘賷賳 丕賱賲賰鬲賵亘 賵丕賱匕賰乇賷丕鬲 賵兀賵噩賴 賲鬲毓丿丿丞 賱賱丨賯賷賯丞 賵爻丐丕賱 賲丕 賴賵 丕賱賵丕賯毓 鬲丨丿賷丿賸丕 賷鬲乇丿丿 賰孬賷乇賸丕貙 賵胤亘毓賸丕 兀爻卅賱丞 毓賳 丕賱氐丨丞 丕賱賳賮爻賷丞.
賵賱丕 亘丿 賲賳 丕賱廿卮丕丿丞 亘鬲賱賰 丕賱賳賴丕賷丞 賵匕賱賰 丕賱爻胤乇 丕賱兀禺賷乇 鈥�
禺賱丕賱 賯乇丕亍丞 亘毓囟 丨賵丕乇丕鬲 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 鬲匕賰乇鬲 賯氐賷丿丞 賵丿賷毓 爻毓丕丿丞:
"丿賯賵丕 毓賱賶 亘丕亘賴 賵賯丕賱賵丕: 賳丨賲賱 賱賰 卮賮丕亍 賲丿賶 丕賱丨賷丕丞 賵兀亘丿賷丞 兀賷囟丕賸
賱丕 鬲睾賱賯 丕賱亘丕亘貙 丿毓賳丕 賳丿禺賱 賵賳毓胤賷賰 丕賱丿賵丕亍.
賲丕 賰丕賳 賷毓乇賮 兀賳 卮賮丕亍賴 賵禺賱賵丿賴 賲賵氐賵賱賷賳 亘睾乇亘丕亍 賲丕乇賷賳 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱卮丕乇毓.
賲丕 賰丕賳 賷毓乇賮 兀賳 卮賮丕亍賴 賵禺賱賵丿賴 乇賴賳 胤乇賯丞 毓賱賶 丕賱亘丕亘.
賮賷 亘賷鬲賷 賲賵鬲賶 賰孬賷乇賵賳貙 賯丕賱貙 賵賲乇囟賶 賰孬賷乇賵賳.
賴賱 賷賰賮賷 丿賵丕丐賰賲 賰賱賾 賴丐賱丕亍責 賱賲 賷睾賱賯 丕賱亘丕亘貙 賰丕賳鬲 賮賷 丕賱丨賵囟 夭賴乇丞 賮賳馗乇 丕賱賷賴丕 賵廿賱賶 賵乇賯丞 賷丕亘爻丞貙 賷賳馗乇賵賳 廿賱賷賴貙 賵賷賳馗乇貙 賵賷賳馗乇 廿賱賶 丕賱賵乇賯丞 賵丕賱夭賴乇丞貙 賷鬲賰賱賲賵賳 賵丕賱賵乇賯丞 賵丕賱夭賴乇丞 氐丕賲鬲鬲丕賳.
賱賲 賷賰賳 賷爻賲毓 賰賱丕賲賸丕 亘賱 氐賲鬲賸丕.
孬賲 兀賯賮賱 丕賱亘丕亘 賵毓丕丿
廿賱賶 賲乇囟賴
賵賲賵鬲赖."
兀卮毓乇 兀賳 亘毓囟 丕爻卅賱丞 賰丕賳鬲 賴賳丕....
賰乇賷爻鬲賵賮乇 亘乇賷爻鬲 丕賱匕賷 乇丨賱 毓賳 毓丕賱賲賳丕 賮賷 亘丿丕賷丞 賴匕丕 丕賱卮賴乇貙 賴賵 賰丕鬲亘 亘乇賷胤丕賳賷 卮賴賷乇貙 賵賲賳 兀亘乇夭 賵兀卮賴乇 乇賵丕賷丕鬲賴 乇賵丕賷丞
The Prestige
丕賱鬲賷 鬲丨賵賱鬲 賱賱賮賷賱賲 丕賱卮賴賷乇 丕賱匕賷 兀禺乇噩賴 賰乇賷爻鬲賵賮乇 賳賵賱丕賳 賯亘賱 18 毓丕賲賸丕 鬲賯乇賷亘賸丕.
~
賮噩乇 賷賵賲 丕賱兀乇亘毓丕亍 - 丕賱丨丕丿賷 毓卮乇 賲賳 卮毓亘丕賳 - 1445 賴賭.
亘賷鬲乇 爻賳賰賱賷乇 禺爻乇 賰賱 卮賷亍 鬲賯乇賷亘賸丕- 賵丕賱丿賴 賵毓賲賱賴 賵丨亘賷亘鬲賴 賵賱賲 賷鬲亘賯 賱賴 廿賱丕 卮賯賷賯丞 亘毓賷丿丞 毓賳賴貙 賲爻賰賵賳賸丕 亘丕賱賮噩賷毓丞 賵丕賱賮卮賱 賷丨丕賵賱 賰鬲丕亘丞 爻賷乇丞 匕丕鬲賷丞貙 賵賱賰賳 爻乇毓丕賳 賲丕 鬲亘丿賵 丕賱爻賷乇丞 爻賷乇丞 乇噩賱 丌禺乇 鬲賲丕賲賸丕 賵賮賷 毓丕賱賲 賲鬲禺賷賱 亘丕賱賰丕賲賱貙 賵賲賳 鬲亘丿兀 賲丨丕賵賱丕鬲賴 -賵賲丨丕賵賱丕鬲賳丕 賲毓賴貙 賱賮氐賱 丕賱毓丕賱賲賷賳 毓賳 亘毓囟.
乇賵丕賷丞 匕賰賷丞 賮賱爻賮賷丞 賵賲丿賴卮丞鈥� 亘丨孬 毓賳 丕賱賴賵賷丞 丕賱卮禺氐賷丞 賵丕賱匕丕鬲 亘賷賳 丕賱賲賰鬲賵亘 賵丕賱匕賰乇賷丕鬲 賵兀賵噩賴 賲鬲毓丿丿丞 賱賱丨賯賷賯丞 賵爻丐丕賱 賲丕 賴賵 丕賱賵丕賯毓 鬲丨丿賷丿賸丕 賷鬲乇丿丿 賰孬賷乇賸丕貙 賵胤亘毓賸丕 兀爻卅賱丞 毓賳 丕賱氐丨丞 丕賱賳賮爻賷丞.
賵賱丕 亘丿 賲賳 丕賱廿卮丕丿丞 亘鬲賱賰 丕賱賳賴丕賷丞 賵匕賱賰 丕賱爻胤乇 丕賱兀禺賷乇 鈥�
禺賱丕賱 賯乇丕亍丞 亘毓囟 丨賵丕乇丕鬲 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 鬲匕賰乇鬲 賯氐賷丿丞 賵丿賷毓 爻毓丕丿丞:
"丿賯賵丕 毓賱賶 亘丕亘賴 賵賯丕賱賵丕: 賳丨賲賱 賱賰 卮賮丕亍 賲丿賶 丕賱丨賷丕丞 賵兀亘丿賷丞 兀賷囟丕賸
賱丕 鬲睾賱賯 丕賱亘丕亘貙 丿毓賳丕 賳丿禺賱 賵賳毓胤賷賰 丕賱丿賵丕亍.
賲丕 賰丕賳 賷毓乇賮 兀賳 卮賮丕亍賴 賵禺賱賵丿賴 賲賵氐賵賱賷賳 亘睾乇亘丕亍 賲丕乇賷賳 賮賷 賴匕丕 丕賱卮丕乇毓.
賲丕 賰丕賳 賷毓乇賮 兀賳 卮賮丕亍賴 賵禺賱賵丿賴 乇賴賳 胤乇賯丞 毓賱賶 丕賱亘丕亘.
賮賷 亘賷鬲賷 賲賵鬲賶 賰孬賷乇賵賳貙 賯丕賱貙 賵賲乇囟賶 賰孬賷乇賵賳.
賴賱 賷賰賮賷 丿賵丕丐賰賲 賰賱賾 賴丐賱丕亍責 賱賲 賷睾賱賯 丕賱亘丕亘貙 賰丕賳鬲 賮賷 丕賱丨賵囟 夭賴乇丞 賮賳馗乇 丕賱賷賴丕 賵廿賱賶 賵乇賯丞 賷丕亘爻丞貙 賷賳馗乇賵賳 廿賱賷賴貙 賵賷賳馗乇貙 賵賷賳馗乇 廿賱賶 丕賱賵乇賯丞 賵丕賱夭賴乇丞貙 賷鬲賰賱賲賵賳 賵丕賱賵乇賯丞 賵丕賱夭賴乇丞 氐丕賲鬲鬲丕賳.
賱賲 賷賰賳 賷爻賲毓 賰賱丕賲賸丕 亘賱 氐賲鬲賸丕.
孬賲 兀賯賮賱 丕賱亘丕亘 賵毓丕丿
廿賱賶 賲乇囟賴
賵賲賵鬲赖."
兀卮毓乇 兀賳 亘毓囟 丕爻卅賱丞 賰丕賳鬲 賴賳丕....
賰乇賷爻鬲賵賮乇 亘乇賷爻鬲 丕賱匕賷 乇丨賱 毓賳 毓丕賱賲賳丕 賮賷 亘丿丕賷丞 賴匕丕 丕賱卮賴乇貙 賴賵 賰丕鬲亘 亘乇賷胤丕賳賷 卮賴賷乇貙 賵賲賳 兀亘乇夭 賵兀卮賴乇 乇賵丕賷丕鬲賴 乇賵丕賷丞
The Prestige
丕賱鬲賷 鬲丨賵賱鬲 賱賱賮賷賱賲 丕賱卮賴賷乇 丕賱匕賷 兀禺乇噩賴 賰乇賷爻鬲賵賮乇 賳賵賱丕賳 賯亘賱 18 毓丕賲賸丕 鬲賯乇賷亘賸丕.
~
賮噩乇 賷賵賲 丕賱兀乇亘毓丕亍 - 丕賱丨丕丿賷 毓卮乇 賲賳 卮毓亘丕賳 - 1445 賴賭.
October 5, 2017
This book resists all efforts to define and pin it down. I would say that essentially this is a story of a man and his troubled relationship with the people around him, in particular his lover Glacia, and most importantly his self. But there are elements and themes that one might well find in SF or fantasy.
He attempts to define himself by writing down his past. But he is dissatisfied and rewrites it, each time becoming more abstract, more inventive until he constructs a fully imagined world but feels that it better encapsulates a deeper truth about his life. The book is split between two narratives both from the perspective of the protagonist Peter Sinclair, one set in the "real" world, the other in the "imagined" world and in each he has written his autobiographical manuscript but which is set in the other world.
An important theme in this book is the notion of identity and what makes us who we are. Do our memories define us? Give us the sense of continuity that allows us to go on thinking we are who we are? Would you be the same person if you had amnesia but you rebuilt your memories afterwards from an autobiography you had written?
My only criticism of this book is that some parts of the narrative felt belaboured. But that is only a very minor criticism really. A very good book and I look forward to reading more by this author.
[EDIT:] After re-reading this novel, I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did the first time, although I'm not sure I understand it any better.
This must be one of the greatest explorations of the theme of identity and memory that I have read. And also what struck me again this time is how pleasant and easy to engage with his prose style is. With the complex ideas the author is tackling here, that really helps.
Undeniably a masterpiece that I look forward to re-reading again in the future. I don't know if I'll ever tire of (re)joining Peter Sinclair in his attempts to define himself and the people around him.
He attempts to define himself by writing down his past. But he is dissatisfied and rewrites it, each time becoming more abstract, more inventive until he constructs a fully imagined world but feels that it better encapsulates a deeper truth about his life. The book is split between two narratives both from the perspective of the protagonist Peter Sinclair, one set in the "real" world, the other in the "imagined" world and in each he has written his autobiographical manuscript but which is set in the other world.
An important theme in this book is the notion of identity and what makes us who we are. Do our memories define us? Give us the sense of continuity that allows us to go on thinking we are who we are? Would you be the same person if you had amnesia but you rebuilt your memories afterwards from an autobiography you had written?
My only criticism of this book is that some parts of the narrative felt belaboured. But that is only a very minor criticism really. A very good book and I look forward to reading more by this author.
[EDIT:] After re-reading this novel, I enjoyed it every bit as much as I did the first time, although I'm not sure I understand it any better.
This must be one of the greatest explorations of the theme of identity and memory that I have read. And also what struck me again this time is how pleasant and easy to engage with his prose style is. With the complex ideas the author is tackling here, that really helps.
Undeniably a masterpiece that I look forward to re-reading again in the future. I don't know if I'll ever tire of (re)joining Peter Sinclair in his attempts to define himself and the people around him.
November 13, 2011
A dazzling meditation on memory and how it defines us, on schizophrenia, on reality and fiction, on the writer and his creation.
The Dream Archipelago, The Islanders and The Affirmation are together a masterpiece of literary fiction. I cannot imagine a reader who (regardless of what she/he normally reads) is not touched and whose life is not a little changed after the encounter with these wonderful writings.
The Dream Archipelago, The Islanders and The Affirmation are together a masterpiece of literary fiction. I cannot imagine a reader who (regardless of what she/he normally reads) is not touched and whose life is not a little changed after the encounter with these wonderful writings.
March 22, 2018
Christopher Priest's The Affirmation is the seemingly straight-forward story of Peter Sinclair, a very depressed man who, in an attempt to face his inner demons and make some sense out of his life, writes his autobiography. However, Peter ends up writing "fiction"; a tale set in a world exceptionally exotic and dreamy. As the story unfolds, we learn that in this very world, another version of Peter wrote the same kind of "fiction" set in our world, for reasons I will not mention. This begs the question: which reality is fictional ? The author keeps you guessing.
Christopher Priest has this admirable ability to trigger different emotions in just a few paragraphs; awe, frustration, surprise, hope, empathy but above all anticipation. I never wanted to put this damn book down. Priest is absolutely amazing, in both form and content. He executes the story with surgical precision, flair and unbridled subtlety; every move the characters make in this book will eventually tip the scales.
This ultimately makes the trip more important than the destination. I understand some people hate the book because of its ending. William Gibson described Samuel Delany's Dhalgren as "A riddle that was never meant to be solved." I believe this also applies to The Affirmation.
Christopher Priest has this admirable ability to trigger different emotions in just a few paragraphs; awe, frustration, surprise, hope, empathy but above all anticipation. I never wanted to put this damn book down. Priest is absolutely amazing, in both form and content. He executes the story with surgical precision, flair and unbridled subtlety; every move the characters make in this book will eventually tip the scales.
This ultimately makes the trip more important than the destination. I understand some people hate the book because of its ending. William Gibson described Samuel Delany's Dhalgren as "A riddle that was never meant to be solved." I believe this also applies to The Affirmation.
November 25, 2018
A book composed entirely of paradox: the poignantly hollow, the cohesively disparate, the conclusively unresolved, the familiarity of being lost and getting lost in the familiar. Anyone who has ever tried to write will recognize the impossible landscape laid out before us in this book. The greatest paradox of all is that it took a literary genius to write it.
June 24, 2017
Captivatingly enigmatic magic realist/sci-fi puzzle. I might have given it five stars if the main character wasn't such a sad sack. I don't have much patience for brooding protagonists who dwell on their broken relationships.
February 16, 2021
My reaction at the end of The Affirmation was to read it again. The words are exactly the same as the first time, as they will be with every reiterated read but my thoughts though, my thoughts kept evolving from imagining schizophrenia, to being stunned at its conclusion, and finally surrendering to deep admiration for Christopher Priest鈥檚 1981 Sci-Fi Masterworks.
Reading this book was mentally immersive. Several times, I found my limbs locked in position, the tip of my thumb lodged between my teeth and my body angled towards the book as if in paralysis, even though my mind was in overdrive following the protagonist鈥檚 dual-narrative journey from London to dream archipelago to claim his 鈥淟otterie鈥� for a genetically-enhanced life. Though classified as sci-fi, the story is quintessential Priest in pushing the fringes of this genre into a unique hybrid of its own. This slow-burn of a psychological novel may be oft-overlooked in today鈥檚 popular lists but in the past 30 years, it has advanced steadily from reader to reader through word-of-mouth. So, whoever you are, I am recommending it to you.
The Affirmation should be read even if only for its superiority in craft. The writing is sophisticated despite its economy, no fancy schmancy sentences here, with simplicity used into great effect to showcase the complexity of an unraveling, hallucinating mind. A mind that splintered into a jumbled heap of memories that reassemble into slightly different stories depending on how each piece is remembered. The genius that is Priest deftly folds in layers and layers of increasingly inward-looking perceptions and delusions, all the while mounting the suspense towards a culmination at the end that knocked the breath out of me. I remember exhaling then, to swear an expletive.
The story has madness, but the storytelling has lucidity. No one less confident and skillful can write this story, which teetered on the edge of pretentiousness but Priest never faltered in his purposeful control. Where the story has flair, it did not have heart. I read The Affirmation with fascinated detachment, and was less impressed by the basic plot and the prosaic language but more by a brilliantly written concept of shifting identities. That could be why I had difficulty feeling empathy for Peter Sinclair, the protagonist, almost as if keeping an emotional distance safely separated me from his problems. A self-indulgent man, Sinclair (or Priest) writes himself (or Sinclair) standing between two parallel mirrors, where one鈥檚 reflection is a reflection of the other that is a reflection of another and on it goes to infinity.
Reality cease being a question when one鈥檚 being cease as reality. Sinclair, whose life this story revolves around, is a 29-year old Londoner who had a mental breakdown triggered by a series of upheavals - job redundancy, parental bereavement, break-up with girlfriend and home eviction. An opportunity arose for Sinclair to relocate to bucolic countryside but isolation and depression only served to spiral him further into the recesses of his mind. In seeking a higher truth about himself, Sinclair writes a falsified autobiography of his ideal self, who in turn writes an autobiography of his real self鈥�.
In the spirit of The Affirmation, my review continues here.
Reading this book was mentally immersive. Several times, I found my limbs locked in position, the tip of my thumb lodged between my teeth and my body angled towards the book as if in paralysis, even though my mind was in overdrive following the protagonist鈥檚 dual-narrative journey from London to dream archipelago to claim his 鈥淟otterie鈥� for a genetically-enhanced life. Though classified as sci-fi, the story is quintessential Priest in pushing the fringes of this genre into a unique hybrid of its own. This slow-burn of a psychological novel may be oft-overlooked in today鈥檚 popular lists but in the past 30 years, it has advanced steadily from reader to reader through word-of-mouth. So, whoever you are, I am recommending it to you.
The Affirmation should be read even if only for its superiority in craft. The writing is sophisticated despite its economy, no fancy schmancy sentences here, with simplicity used into great effect to showcase the complexity of an unraveling, hallucinating mind. A mind that splintered into a jumbled heap of memories that reassemble into slightly different stories depending on how each piece is remembered. The genius that is Priest deftly folds in layers and layers of increasingly inward-looking perceptions and delusions, all the while mounting the suspense towards a culmination at the end that knocked the breath out of me. I remember exhaling then, to swear an expletive.
The story has madness, but the storytelling has lucidity. No one less confident and skillful can write this story, which teetered on the edge of pretentiousness but Priest never faltered in his purposeful control. Where the story has flair, it did not have heart. I read The Affirmation with fascinated detachment, and was less impressed by the basic plot and the prosaic language but more by a brilliantly written concept of shifting identities. That could be why I had difficulty feeling empathy for Peter Sinclair, the protagonist, almost as if keeping an emotional distance safely separated me from his problems. A self-indulgent man, Sinclair (or Priest) writes himself (or Sinclair) standing between two parallel mirrors, where one鈥檚 reflection is a reflection of the other that is a reflection of another and on it goes to infinity.
Reality cease being a question when one鈥檚 being cease as reality. Sinclair, whose life this story revolves around, is a 29-year old Londoner who had a mental breakdown triggered by a series of upheavals - job redundancy, parental bereavement, break-up with girlfriend and home eviction. An opportunity arose for Sinclair to relocate to bucolic countryside but isolation and depression only served to spiral him further into the recesses of his mind. In seeking a higher truth about himself, Sinclair writes a falsified autobiography of his ideal self, who in turn writes an autobiography of his real self鈥�.
In the spirit of The Affirmation, my review continues here.
May 16, 2015
I had a chat with Chris Priest at Eastercon, and asked him which of his books I should read that I had not read - I am familiar with both his early and his most recent work, but less clear on the middle. Without hesitation, he said that The Affirmation, published in 1981, is the book that his earlier novels lead to and his later works reflect on. A kind spouse got it for my birthday a couple of weeks ago and I devoured it this weekend in post-election haze.
I can see why Priest himself thinks of it as central to his 艙uvre. The book is about a binary existence, a writer based in England writing about his own life in a fictional archipelago where he can gain eternal life at the cost of his own memory; while his doppelg盲nger in the archipelago is writing about his life A strange place called England. Families, lovers, writing all intersect across the two strands of reality and we cannot be certain which, if either, is the more real. A number of his earlier books are about a clash between realities, but we readers are usually left less uncertain than we are here about which is "real". And a lot of his later books pick up themes from The Affirmation and take them further, or in a different direction. Certainly I feel that now I have read it, I appreciate better what Priest was doing in The Islanders and The Adjacent. It's a bit surprising that the only award it picked up was the Australian Ditmar (though I suppose there were just fewer aware in 1981; it lost the BSFA award to The Shadow of the Torturer). But the 2011 Gollancz SF Masterworks edition features a helpful introduction by Graham Sleight.
August 11, 2020
Utterly mind blowing. Hands down the best book about mental illness I鈥檝e had the pleasure to read. I went into this with no experience of Christopher Priests writing apart from having seen the movie The Prestige, and that was made by one of the greatest film makers of all time, so hard to draw conclusions about the authors writing. After The Affirmation however, I will be trying to gorge myself with as much of his work as possible.
What I have noticed is that The Affirmation revolves around a series of Islands known as The Dream Archipelago which are also the subject of a few of his other novels but are not referred to as a series.
The line between fantasy and reality in this book is constantly blurred, sometimes switching between the two mid chapter, which gives a disorientating feel and to me seemed an excellent way of conveying the disorientation felt by people with mental illness during times of lucidity. The scenes in the archipelago also have a dream like quality, again showing the quality of Priests writing.
5* for me, a first rate exploration of mental illness and the themes of memory and identity.
What I have noticed is that The Affirmation revolves around a series of Islands known as The Dream Archipelago which are also the subject of a few of his other novels but are not referred to as a series.
The line between fantasy and reality in this book is constantly blurred, sometimes switching between the two mid chapter, which gives a disorientating feel and to me seemed an excellent way of conveying the disorientation felt by people with mental illness during times of lucidity. The scenes in the archipelago also have a dream like quality, again showing the quality of Priests writing.
5* for me, a first rate exploration of mental illness and the themes of memory and identity.
August 20, 2014
So far I have read 3 C Priest novels and I utterly love the style of the author and the books are so compelling that you do not want to stop, though The Prestige kind of faded quickly from my memory, while The Separation left me with a somewhat bitter taste ( on further reflection, i think that's a book that people with an emotional connection to Britain will enjoy most, rather than a pure nationalistic British book that I originally thought)
The Affirmation gets back to the personal stage and for that it is so much more compelling than The Separation; a truly mind blowing book with a justly famous (and very appropriate) ending; the best description of it is as a novelization of the famous Escher print of two hands drawing each other
The Affirmation gets back to the personal stage and for that it is so much more compelling than The Separation; a truly mind blowing book with a justly famous (and very appropriate) ending; the best description of it is as a novelization of the famous Escher print of two hands drawing each other
December 17, 2022
Entre los t贸picos que los escritores sueltan en las entrevistas uno de los que m谩s odio es el de "Los personajes me llevan adonde ellos quieren".
Ya saben: los escritores, esos demiurgos capaces de crear seres con vida propia, independientes de su voluntad.
Modestia pura, lo suyo.
En fin, que no soporto a los escritores que se ponen intensitos con el proceso de escritura.
Y voy y me leo una novela que b谩sicamente trata de un tipo que se pone muy pero que muy intenso con una cosa que ha escrito.
Y aunque deber铆a odiarla, ni siquiera me disgusta. 驴Por qu茅? No tengo ni la menor idea.
Puede que Priest sea ese cocinero 煤nico que consigue que te acabes el caldo de cilantro cuando ya solo el olor te tira para atr谩s.
Por 茅l van las 4 estrellas (no tanto por la novela).
Ya saben: los escritores, esos demiurgos capaces de crear seres con vida propia, independientes de su voluntad.
Modestia pura, lo suyo.
En fin, que no soporto a los escritores que se ponen intensitos con el proceso de escritura.
Y voy y me leo una novela que b谩sicamente trata de un tipo que se pone muy pero que muy intenso con una cosa que ha escrito.
Y aunque deber铆a odiarla, ni siquiera me disgusta. 驴Por qu茅? No tengo ni la menor idea.
Puede que Priest sea ese cocinero 煤nico que consigue que te acabes el caldo de cilantro cuando ya solo el olor te tira para atr谩s.
Por 茅l van las 4 estrellas (no tanto por la novela).
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