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| The Egyptologist — Reviews |  |
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The Egyptologist was on 12 2004 Best Fiction Lists A wildly pleasurable, dazzling reading experience, big in heart and
execution: crazed, ecstatic, and entertaining in the deepest sense
of the word. Arthur Phillips is a terrifically talented writer,
and these pages overflow with wit, mad humor, and, finally, a deep
undercurrent of pathos. [In The Egyptologist], you don't read between the lines;
you live between them....Readers will be crazed to get to the next
page. An astonishing imagination...Literally and literarily fabulous....The
Egyptologist is a work of remarkable dimension, a tale as deep
as it is tall. The Egyptologist is nothing like Phillips's bestselling debut, Prague,
and yet it's full of all the dazzling talent he showed there....Scathingly
funny. Tragic, pathetic, blackly funny...and with a strange, growing undercurrent of horror. You have never read a novel like it. The Egyptologist is a wonder, a work of imaginative prowess
that more than fulfills the promise of Prague. It's
ambitious. It's inventive. It's challenging....What remains
perfectly clear...is Phillips' rapid ascension as a novelist of complexity,
depth, and vast imagination. Some of the most amusingly unreliable narrators you'll find in literature....Bears
the mark of a deliciously devious imagination....[The Egyptologist]
offers a king's bounty of lively, sparkling conceptions and misconceptions. Phillips pulls off [the narrative] triumphantly. The book is a tour
de force of plotting and narrative technique...one of the most horrendously,
hideously humorous endings in modern fiction. It...will knock you out. One of the year's best. Phillips's wildly inventive second novel is hard to resist....Phillips's
pitch-perfect ventriloquism is a wonder....Phillips triumphs. Sophisticated and deliciously diabolical. Phillips is nearly as deft as Nabokov at parodying the academic mind. Phillips is a master manipulator, able to assume a dozen convincingly
different voices at will, and his book is vastly entertaining...The
ending, which cannot be revealed, is shocking. It's so good I want to put on a sandwich board and walk up and down
telling people they MUST read it....The tightly layered plot unwinds,
at breakneck speed, to a climax as dazzling as a gold necklace on a
pharaoh's chest. [Nothing] is what it seems in this awesomely clever fiction....[Readers]
will never grasp how things came about until the jolting end. Scorchingly funny. This richly inventive epic... is for those who like a historical jeu
d'esprit that is delivered with intelligence. Why believe what antiquity tells us when the present is so often made
of lies? It is a testament to Mr. Phillips's art that The
Egyptologist keeps us reading to the very end without ever answering
the question. A rich, fat, historical romp....Clever, ambitious, and artfully constructed....A
bravura display....A brave, deft, high-wire act of storytelling....Luxuriant
and fearlessly unparochial....Most enjoyable of all is the amused and
amusing prestidigitation of an author whose talents and limits seem
not yet to have been fully tested. Brilliant. Deceptively complex. Gut-bustingly witty. At
once dark and winningly optimistic. Without a doubt, the best
book I have read this year....His ability to craft a narrative that
is both screwball and profound is unparalleled. The book is genuinely outstanding, its devious and engrossing plot
outshone only by Phillips's frequently hilarious and revealing depictions
of human frailty and folly. An astonishingly clever Nabokovian tangle... Yet, thanks to Phillips'
daunting skill--genius, maybe--at revelation through suggestion, we
can read between the lines. What a splendid, funny, bewitching book…Beneath Arthur Phillips'
singular wit and peerless comic timing, lies a spot-on parable of 20th
Century self-delusion and the painfully fruitless quest for immortality. For while The Egyptologist is a genuine thriller, it is also
genuinely hilarious. In Phillips' hands this makes for an outlandish
and refreshing literary combo....leaping beyond slapstick into breathtaking
comic madness. A beautifully written novel that is mournful, slapstick, lewd, sympathetic,
and bitterly funny. The Egyptologist...is every bit as accomplished and as enjoyable
[as Prague], fulfilling the promise of his first effort while
offering extraordinary promise for his next....The Egyptologist, with
first-rate prose, dead-on characterization, and a unique sense of what
makes a story, represents an entirely original and satisfying work
of the imagination by a writer who may go on to become one of our best. Phillips proves himself once again to be a wildly creative storyteller. Richly imagined and exceedingly elaborate...dizzying structure. Exhilarating....The Egyptologist is as tantalizing as the
search it recounts. Highly recommended. A-. What you'll love: opium-addicted heiresses, sexy communists,
Australian detectives and real-life figures...heighten the novel's
dazzling complexity. The dueling voices of a nostalgic detective and the monomaniacal archeologist
he pursues around the world are only part of the treasure contained
in The Egyptologist. Crafted with nuanced erudition and literary
flair, Phillips uncovers the hieroglyphs (not hieroglyphics - but you'll
learn that) and building blocks beneath how we construct, interpret
and trust our storytellers. Highly textured, quirky, serpentine, surprising. This is a suave, elegant novel, replete with sinuously composed sentences
and delicious wordplay....Phillips's formidable research and witty
prose make this one well worth your time. He's quite possibly
a major novelist in the making. An intricately built whodunit for the King Tut lover in all of us. An intensely rewarding puzzle. The novel as funhouse mirror -- a zesty celebration of the Big Lie....A
delicious pleasure of the novel is finding the clues, both subtle and
broad, that Phillips plants. Dazzling...A finish both poignant and eye-popping....His entertaining
characters are believably two- or three-faced, and his phrasing is
gorgeous....Read Phillips' grand Egyptologist and the name
of Ralph M. Trilipush will stay with you for a long, long time. Even more clever and erudite than in his brilliant debut Prague....Damn,
that boy can write. ...something more than clever. Smart yet feeling, The Egyptologist works
as adventure story, intellectual labyrinth, and moral examination. The Egyptologist is one of the few novels I've read in recent
years that I literally could not put down. I took a whole afternoon
off to finish it, and when I was done I had to go back and reread some
pieces to savor some of the sweetness. A glittery, intricate entertainment, the work of a writer uncommonly
skilled at creating intelligent puzzles. An adventure in unreliable narration, and replete with old-fashioned
charms. Diabolically complicated in its construction....Delirious, witty fun. The Egyptologist soars so high, into clouds of such bright
comic invention, that Phillips achieves a hilarity equal to anything
in Prague....A novel very much worth reading. Cleverly crafted whodunit....The Egyptologist is complicated,
fulfilling, and full of good characters. A dense and witty novel, full of surprises and puzzles. Funny, original, and adventuresome. Ambitious and funny and clever....Phillips works beautifully with
a theme he explored in Prague: the way people construct place. |
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