Customer Reviews
His best? - By: Earl Dumarest II, 08 Apr 2008 
Totallly brilliant. Mesmerising storyline, plot twists which defy belief, & a moving sense of life & love lost & spirallling just outside of reality. I love most of Priests major works but I think this is probably his masterpiece. Can't imagine anyone reading this & being disappointed - it's a work of genius.
Mind Exercising! - By: Cumnock, 10 Mar 2008 
Well - what a mind's journey I've just had. Picked up The Separation at my local library expecting an interesting WW11 story, but was intrigued, confused, addicted alll through this book. I've never ventured into this kind of literature before & the interwoven intricacies of two separate strands of 'what might have been' & the actuality of recent history was mind-exercising enough without the added fillip of descendant identity. An amazingly crafted tale - one to think/puzzle over for quite a while.
A fine read - By: Gareth Power, 12 Dec 2007 This multi-faceted novel is a very satisfying read, combining elements of history, alternate worlds, existential angst & psychological imbalance. Priest is a very fine writer indeed.
The only thing that lets this down for me is the lack of forward momentum in long sections of the book. It was hard to understand what the point of parts of it were until much later. Had I not had faith in Priest's ability to make it alll come together in the end, I might well have given up on it halfway through.
A masterpiece of Science Fiction - By: A. Whitehead, 15 Jul 2006 The Separation is the eleventh & most recent novel by British SF author Christopher Priest, published in 2002 when it promptly won the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the BSFA Best Novel Award & the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire. For reasons that remain unknown, the British publishers tried to kill the book at birth, releasing it with a minimum of fanfare & remaindering it as soon as humanly possible. Luckily, Gollancz saved the book & released it in a handsome paperback edition in 2004, where as part of their Priest reprint range it has remained in-print & with increasing critical acclaim ever since.
Priest's novel, The Prestige (soon to be a major motion picture), is regarded as his best & most well-known book. The Separation is a book that at one moment is similar (another novel about duality & identity) & at once utterly different. It very nearly defies a plot summary, since any attempt to convey the storyline would be in itself verging on a spoiler. But I will do my best.
A historian working in 1999 becomes intrigued by a minor historical figure, a pacifist in Second World War Britain briefly mentioned by Churchill in his war memoirs. This man, JL Sawyer, is soon revealed to be one of a pair of identical twins. In 1936 Jack & Joe Sawyer take part in the Olympic Games in Berlin as coxless rowers, winning a bronze medal, but soon the outbreak of war separates them: Jack becomes a bomber pilot, tormented by the destruction he wreaks each night on German cities. Joe, the pacifist, becomes a Red Cross ambulance driver helping find survivors of the nightly Blitz on cities such as Manchester & London. Their stories are related as a series of diaries & memoirs written by both & also in (mostly fictional) historical documents relating to the period, some by such personages as Churchill, Goebbels & Rudolph Hess. Other devices come into play, particularly towards the ending of the book.
Priest is well-known for his slippery plots, pulling off narrative sleights-of-hand & 'twist' moments that make M. Night Shymalan's films look like the work of an amateur hack. Here he seems to reveal the twist very early, within a few pages (and silencing the critics who claim his books are rarely 'overt' SF). However, he rapidly pulls the rug out from the reader's feet again, & then again. Amidst the confusion generated by the shifting narrative, however, a pattern slowly emerges which seems confirmed in the extremely haunting conclusion. Some may deem the ending to be a 'cop-out' but nothing it as it seems, for the revelation apparently inherent in the book's finale does not explain events earlier in the book, leading to much greater thought being demanded from the reader to examine the truth of the story.
The Seperation, like most Priest books, hides an incredible amount of depth behind its deceptively simple, almost sparse prose. Characters are built up & deconstructed with nearly contemptuous ease in front of us. Priest captures the atmosphere of WWII Britain & the moral confusion of the reality of war with vivid storytelling techniques & the use of statistics & historical texts (real & feigned). Priest even educates the reader in areas about the war that have not been very well explored (the state of conscientious objectors in WWII Britain is not something I had previously considered).
The Separation is an extraordinary book in idea, even moreso than The Prestige. The lack of an 'absolute' conclusion or explanation for what has happened in the book may irritate some readers, but I found it extremely refreshing to read a book that demands that the reader actuallly think, rather than being spoon-fed the answers on a plate. It is in places beautifully written: Priest's take on Churchill is so good I was startled to find several impressive & very 'Churchillian' pieces of dialogue were Priest's own invention & not taken from any kind of historical record. In other places the theme of the book is so vast that sometimes it threatens to overwhelm the more human moments of the story (the reader is perhaps invited to furiously think "What the hell is going on?" rather than simply sit back & have the tale unfold). However, this is more likely to have just been my reaction to the story rather than an inherent problem. I would say that I found myself preferring The Prestige to The Seperation by a hair's breadth, but this may just have been brain hoisting the surrender flag. After greater reflection, I suspect I will find myself approving it the more of the two books.
The Separation is an excellent, headily atmospheric novel that forces the reader to think about what they are reading carefully. I recommend it without hesitation. This book was nearly stillborn due to the stupidity of the publishers & the literary world would be a much poorer place without it.
what has this got to do with SCIENCE FICTION?? - By: Mr. Rodney Crerand, 18 Mar 2005 
I read this book over the course of a weekend. What a complete waste of time! Firstly this book has no SF merits at alll. Secondly the author tells the story at such a SLOOOOOOOOOOW pace it becomes a trial just to keep with it. In the end the SF element of this book is basicallly a man who got a bang on the head.
In summation this is a VERY POOR MAN's version of something like JACOBS LADDER
