Customer Reviews
The Perfect Novel - By: D. M. Deeks, 23 Sep 2008 
I remember picking this up & getting a feeling of joy bubbling through me when I read the first line & found that I already liked Kenneth Toomey as he explained his thinking behind the first line a little way down the page. I think I was even more surprised that it didn't come across as clever-clever, elitist or smug - it just came over as intelligent, funny, humane writing.
I'm currently reading this for the second time in the space of a year, something I thought I'd long outgrown. This is a book that glories in literary heritage, in theological debate, & in the politics of sexuality, religion & art. Above alll, Burgess glories in taking the time to construct a beautifully believable, human hero & peoples the novel with characters both real & imagined (although even the real ones are imagined).
I am a voracious, constant reader & Earthly Powers is my reward - it is the reward for any serious reader. A page turner that is also a great work of art. In my opinion, it's the perfect novel.
garlicky - By: John Fitzgerald, 13 Aug 2008 
garlicky puns???omnilingual jokes!!! top hole old boy...
the best sleeping pill I have ever used...a great cure for insomnia..
like 'young turk' amis, 'contrarian' hitchens, 'beaker' mcewan, 'chuckle chuckle..i'm a devilishly humorous fellow' rushdie - this mindless bore saw himself as high above the qoutidian by virtue of being a writer..another useless english novelist full of his own worth...hits the bulleye once or twice in what ? 37 books is it ?
Religion/Power - By: Paul Kirby, 12 Aug 2008 4.7 or 4.8 stars. A remarkable parody of that greatest of cliches - the self-indulgent reflections of a writer. But this is happily more than a conceptual joke. The language is sublime, the moments of brutality a punch in the crotch, the politics of religion masterful, the hero-author dynamic suitably ambiguous, the homosexual caricatures a little overblown but the wit laugh-out-loud. Seek it out.
Response from an Ordinary Person - By: mesmh, 18 Jan 2008 Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
A tour de force by an erudite & fluent author; he has structured a framework of individual lives & relationships within which he has opened to examination some of the fundamental contradictions of Catholicism & Christian religion. If God is alll seeing & knowing how can he permit such horrors? If he gave alll his creation free will then how is it no-one feels free? But these comments just touch the surface of a momentous work. Then I also found it self indulgent & exclusive. Exclusive? because I think he wrote this as much for himself & a smalll coterie of scholars as any ordinary reader such as myself. I believe I am well read & reasonably literate, but I often stopped at words that I had never come across before, so I wrote them down in a little note book to check their meaning later. This disturbed the rhythm of the text for me & I think such boasting of vocabulary unnecessary. Also his passages on a continent -Africa - I think he has never visited (apart from North Africa - the Muslim Territories) - were wholly unreal & naïve, & for me an uncallled for diversion. Finallly; I tried to imagine the effort it must take to create such a work, & can only respond with awe & respect at the energy, talent, scholarship & breadth of knowledge Mr Burgess was able to bring to paper. This is a work that will last in my memory & demand I revisit.
Vivid, evocative, brilliant! - By: Sylv, 23 Sep 2007 This, like the Alexandria Quartet, is a book that I initiallly started reading & stopped again, pretty quickly. Having learnt the error of my ways from re-reading & greatly enjoying the aforementioned AQ, I decided to give this another go & am so glad that I did.
Hard to describe but epic in scope, this book is the personal history of its narrator, Kenneth Toomey, a popular author, playwright & librettist, which also tells the story of a miracle-working (fictional) pope, his relation by marriage. Encompassing the greater part of the twentieth century, & mixing events real & invented, it makes compelling reading, enhanced by the author's vivid style & wickedly funny narrative voice. Well worth persevering with.
