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3 and a half... I think?

So before I get into the review, a few things you need to know about this book. This is not a book for everyone. It's complicated, it requires the reader to stop and think really hard constantly, there's little to no "external" plot, but what's going on inside the characters is hugely important. To read Crowley's prose, you need to be focused and awake: if you miss so much as a sentence, entire pages will stop making sense. Avid readers of classical literature and writers will find his work very rich, multilayered and interesting, though maybe not entertaining. People who like "The Da Vinci" code won't understand squat. This book will appeal to readers who are fascinated with history, philosophy, the occult and the possibility that the generally-accepted concept of reality is not all there is. People who like solid realism will roll their eyes and throw the book out the window. This is a book about how our perception affects our understanding of the world, about how Western mysticism and the related beliefs and superstitions affect our reality through our worldview.

The "Aegypt" tetralogy is my husband's favorite work of fiction. He's huge nerd with a English literature degree, so those books are a rare treat to him. Just like the main character of "The Solitudes", he let go of a frustrating and circular academic career and spent some time figuring out "What now?". But the resemblance ends there. He told me this book would take me through a lot of emotions, including frustration and hilarity, and he was right. Every once in a while, I would shake the book, yelling "Why are you so stupid?!", and then giggle myself silly halfway through the following chapter. So if my review feels scattered and a bit confusing, consider that a preview of what you are in for when you pick up this book!

"Solitudes" is the story of how Pierce Moffet's life suddenly turns upside down and he winds up landing in a tiny village somewhere in New York state, where he slowly rebuilds his life. In that process of finding a new path, falling in love, dealing with his family history and so on, he begins to dive into a question an old professor of his planted in his mind: is there more than one history of the world? Can the metaphysical be completely ripped apart from the scientific? Should it? After all, it's only a relatively recent trend to separate science and spirituality: the thing about magic is that when we start understanding it, it becomes science. Pierce becomes convinced that a country called Aegypt is the answer, that it exists just outside of our perceptions, perhaps at a different time than the historical Egypt; it is the land where magic and occult knowledge comes from and Pierce wants to write its history.

Summarizing any more than that is really tricky, because Crowley takes this story all over the place, in a non-linear narrative that includes a book-within-a-book, stories about John Dee and William Shakespeare, Giordanno Bruno's mnemonic techniques and the hippie lifestyle in a small country town.

There is no doubt that this is a beautifully, excessively cleverly written book. But I found it just a bit too ethereal for my taste. It's definitely a rewarding read, but even Jason admits that it's not a particularly fun one: the style can be confusing. Crowley omits to put the text of "Bitten Apples" (the book within the book) in quotation marks or italics, so when the narrative switches abruptly from the fictional book back to the main story, you get that exact feeling of aggravated confusion you get when someone rudely interrupts your reading break and pulls you back into reality. It's jarring, despite the cleverness of the trick. The characters are not particularly likable, but they are not flat-out awful either. I actually think my problem with Crowley's characters is their blandness. Smokey in "Little, Big", as well as most of Alice's family gave me that same feeling of faded outlines of people, as opposed to bright and multi-dimensional people. That being said the idea of an internal and external history is a very intriguing topic and I have always been fascinated by occult systems and their history, so digging into those ideas kept me interested to the end.

It took me a bit longer than usual to finish this book, probably because I read other books while I was working on this one: I knew my entertainment and escapism fix wasn't going to come from "Solitudes", but it had its own rewards. I really appreciated the beauty of the prose and the technical brilliance, but it was exhausting and I suspect Crowley might have been on a variety of substances when he outlined this story... It might take me a while to get to the sequel, but I would really love to see what happens next!