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I normally write my reviews - for what they're worth - straight after I've finished the book. I want to get the thoughts down as soon as I'm done. Before I forget. But I think I'm going to have to give this one some thought.

It's the first Philip K Dick novel I've read in a long time. Loosely part of a trilogy apparently. Dick finished it in 1982, but died before it was published. Weirdly it does feel like the kind of book that someone would write as they try and get their thoughts together on the nature of the world, even the universe, at the end of their life.

He pulls together different sources to tell the story of Bishop Timothy Archer from the point of view of his daughter-in-law, Angel. It comes with a bibliography. It is filled with quotes from the Bible, Virgil, from Yeats, from Donne, from Goethe. There's even poetry from Henry Vaughan. It deals with John Allegro's theory of Christ being a magic mushroom, which written like that makes it seem even madder than it actually might be.

It's not a science-fiction book, which you'd expect from Philip K Dick, but it does deal with themes on the nature of reality. Of how we know what we know. Angel towards the end says she coped with all her loss by becoming a machine, but she never really does.

I'm not sure if this is an incredibly profound book or the ramblings of a man who took too many drugs. I'm not sure if there's much difference between the two. Except this isn't rambling. It straightforwardly written, clear, and a little bit cynical. It's never clear whether we're supposed to side with Angel Archer's cynicism or with the possibilities that she refuses to accept.

Still I think I liked it a lot. And it is a reading list of its own.

O, and it makes me want to read more Philip K Dick.