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The Glamour
Cameraman Richard Grey's memory has blanked out the few weeks before he was injured in a car bomb explosion. When he is visited by a girl who seems to have been his lover, his attempts to recall the forgotten period produce an odyssey through France and conflicting accounts of what happened. When Susan Kewley speaks to him of that time, he finds himself glimpsing a terrible twilight world - the world of "the glamour".
235 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
About the author
Christopher Priest
119 books1,000 followersChristopher Priest was born in Cheshire, England. He began writing soon after leaving school and has been a full-time freelance writer since 1968.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.
He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.
He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.
As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.
He has published eleven novels, four short story collections and a number of other books, including critical works, biographies, novelizations and children’s non-fiction.
He has written drama for radio (BBC Radio 4) and television (Thames TV and HTV). In 2006, The Prestige was made into a major production by Newmarket Films. Directed by Christopher Nolan, The Prestige went straight to No.1 US box office. It received two Academy Award nominations. Other novels, including Fugue For a Darkening Island and The Glamour, are currently in preparation for filming.
He is Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. In 2007, an exhibition of installation art based on his novel The Affirmation was mounted in London.
As a journalist he has written features and reviews for The Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the New Statesman, the Scotsman, and many different magazines.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 109 reviews
November 9, 2022
"We sift through our memories not to understand the past but to suit our present understanding of ourselves. The urge to rewrite ourselves as real-seeming fictions is present in us all."
- Christopher Priest, The Glamour
This remarkable novel opens in a convalescent hospital set in the British countryside where BBC news cameraman Richard Grey is temporarily confined to a wheelchair during his recovery from a terrorist bomb blast on a London street. Richard begins telling his story but there is a piece missing – he possesses no recollection of the weeks immediately preceding the explosion. Soon thereafter an attractive young lady, Susan, shows up at the hospital, claiming to be Richard’s girlfriend. Richard does not recognize Susan, however this lack of memory only intensifies Richard’s romantic feelings. A passionate emotional bond quickly forms although a bit of complication intrudes – Susan is still involved with someone maintaining a serious hold on her, a mysterious man by the name of Niall.
Ah, a traditional love triangle, but let me assure you, to describe The Glamour as traditional would be entirely misleading. To say anything more would be to say too much; rather, below are a number of knotty enigmas we encounter via a string of astonishing twists woven into Christopher Priest's tale of suspense. And to repeat: extraordinary, astonishing, suspenseful – a psychological thriller I could hardly put down.
Homo Sapiens: Our worldwide human population currently tops seven billion strong. So many millions of people, yet we all share, every single one of us, a common human nature. What if there was a particular quality usually found in comic book heroes separating off some members, a quality like superhuman strength, invulnerability, x-ray vision, flying . . . or, the power to turn invisible? If such were the case, many of our time-tested assumptions about human life on planet earth would instantly be invalidated, consigned to the trash heap. Such imaginative speculation is what British author Christopher Priest is all about. And fortunately for lovers of literary fiction, Mr. Priest's mastery of craft and language is comparable to Wilkie Collins or Graham Greene.
Invisibility, One: When Richard Grey is in the convalescent hospital, one of the doctors employs hypnosis as a possible means of helping restore Richard’s gap in memory. During the first session, the doctor tells Richard that his medical assistant, a young woman sitting in a chair across from him, will be made invisible. Richard looks in her direction: to his astonishment, she is, in fact, invisible. Such phenomenon in the world of psychoanalysis and hypnosis is referred to as negative hallucination. As we turn the novel’s pages, we wonder how such hypnotic powers might be related to further instances of invisibility. It is also worth noting girlfriend Susan refers to invisibility as “the glamour,” coming from the old Scottish word “glammer" meaning a spell or enchantment.
Invisibility, Two: Taken as metaphor, certain memories we once cherished in shaping our sense of identity are no longer visible to us. Such is the power of time and events coupled with our ever-changing sense of self: going, going, gone – what we once highly valued completely vanishes; certain hunks of our past become invisible. Various are the causes: with Richard, there is the trauma of a terrorist attack; for others like Susan, ordeals suffered in childhood and adolescence.
Invisibility, Three: If I walk into a crowded room flanked by two instantly recognizable movie stars or world leaders, how many men and women in the crowd would actually see me, let along remember my face the next day? In a very real sense, I would have become invisible. One of many psychological and social conundrums both Richard and Susan grapple with.
Invisibility, Four: Think how the plot would thicken and bend in bizarre angles if characters in a novel could slide in and out of invisibility. Now you see me, now you don't. Welcome to the world of The Glamour. Sound captivating? It is highly captivating.
Privacy of the Individual: Our stream-of-consciousness and private inner thoughts are forever ours and ours alone. Not so in fiction - a character shares their mind-stream with a narrator or author, free indirect style being a blending of objective third-person narration with the thoughts and words of a character. On this topic Christopher Priest reveals layers of his storytelling magic from beginning to end, always keeping at least one step ahead of his reader.
Metafiction: The Glamour features multiple narrators and maybe even a third-person narrator. It's that "maybe" that blurs the line and might even undermine our conventional notions of narration and story, including my statement above: "This remarkable novel opens in a convalescent hospital set in the British countryside where BBC news cameraman Richard Grey is temporarily confined to a wheelchair during his recovery from a terrorist bomb blast on a London street." How exactly? I urge you to read for yourself.
We all make fictions. Not one of us is what we seem. When we meet other people we try to project an image of ourselves that will please or influence them in some way."
- Christopher Priest, The Glamour
August 20, 2019
What do you get when you mix a solid psychological thriller with expertly placed leads, reveals, red-herrings and plot reversals, treat it gently, considerately, and then pair it with a righteous fantasy/SF treatment of the invisible man?
Do you get The Invisible Man? Hell no! Not when Christopher Priest writes it! Instead, you go down a rabbit hole of perception, negative hallucinations, a frustrated romance, a sinister triangle relationship, and PLOT TWISTS that kicked my butt.
And I thought Prestige was good? Well, welcome to an oh-so-gentle tie-in to all his other later-period novels, a very tight plot of discovery that takes the literary version of the old superhero problem of being invisible and makes it not only real but psychologically damaging. And my description doesn't do it justice. It's not like anything I've read unless I count those few handfuls of novels that manage to truly surprise me, of course. :)
I think the best part was how this novel demolished itself. I chortled with glee. :)
Do you get The Invisible Man? Hell no! Not when Christopher Priest writes it! Instead, you go down a rabbit hole of perception, negative hallucinations, a frustrated romance, a sinister triangle relationship, and PLOT TWISTS that kicked my butt.
And I thought Prestige was good? Well, welcome to an oh-so-gentle tie-in to all his other later-period novels, a very tight plot of discovery that takes the literary version of the old superhero problem of being invisible and makes it not only real but psychologically damaging. And my description doesn't do it justice. It's not like anything I've read unless I count those few handfuls of novels that manage to truly surprise me, of course. :)
I think the best part was how this novel demolished itself. I chortled with glee. :)
February 5, 2009
Most people appear to believe that the definitive novel about invisibility is H.G. Wells's The Invisible Man. This book is comparatively unknown, but IMHO far more interesting. I really liked it.
To start off with: what does "invisible" mean? It's not as obvious as one first thinks.
To start off with: what does "invisible" mean? It's not as obvious as one first thinks.
December 12, 2013
This is how a really good plot twist works: you know, almost right from the start, that there's going to be a twist, and that you're going to be woefully underprepared for it. The author drops clues, doubles back on himself, invalidates previous clues and adds a few red herrings. About halfway in, you start to realise you've worked out what the twist is going to be - it's a clever one, most people won't get it, and you're not entirely certain yourself but if you're right, goddamnit, then it's going to be so cool.
SO COOL.
And then you spend the next hundred pages trying to work out whether you've really got the trick of it, seeing your hypothesis confirmed and disproved, twisting everything you read this way and that to see if it all fits-
And then Christopher Priest comes waltzing in, smugly apologetic smile plastered across his face, half a mile ahead of you all along. He smashes your entire view of the book, narrative, events, characters, into tiny artfully broken smithereens, tips his hat to you-
And you realise that when you read a review calling this an "anti-novel", and then refusing to tell you what the plot was about, but imploring you to read it RIGHT THIS MINUTE, that review was correct in every particular.
The book was fun. I enjoy being in a Christopher Priest novel, he writes beautifully and deftly, his characters are unreliable and it is ever so much fun to hypothesise away, knowing that he is very much in control of everything you're thinking. The book would have been five stars for me just because it was a fascinating place to be.
Shit, though. Why do people only ever know him for The Prestige?
P.S. When you've finished, go back and read the first chapter again. Go on. Didn't you forget that was there?
Edited a few days later to add: I've just been looking through notebooks from the last few months, ideas for stories I was playing with writing, and I totally had the idea for something remarkably similar to Priest's Glamour and being so easily forgettable (in fact, I pretty much brainstormed the character of Susan) all by myself in about September of this year. Slightly embarassingly, I've followed it up with the comment, "You could get the angstiest short story out of this. Go write a sad journal entry - or make her a bit character." I am so glad that someone else has written this and done it justice. But that's probably another reason this book struck so much of a chord with me. I am such a bloody amateur.
SO COOL.
And then you spend the next hundred pages trying to work out whether you've really got the trick of it, seeing your hypothesis confirmed and disproved, twisting everything you read this way and that to see if it all fits-
And then Christopher Priest comes waltzing in, smugly apologetic smile plastered across his face, half a mile ahead of you all along. He smashes your entire view of the book, narrative, events, characters, into tiny artfully broken smithereens, tips his hat to you-
And you realise that when you read a review calling this an "anti-novel", and then refusing to tell you what the plot was about, but imploring you to read it RIGHT THIS MINUTE, that review was correct in every particular.
The book was fun. I enjoy being in a Christopher Priest novel, he writes beautifully and deftly, his characters are unreliable and it is ever so much fun to hypothesise away, knowing that he is very much in control of everything you're thinking. The book would have been five stars for me just because it was a fascinating place to be.
Shit, though. Why do people only ever know him for The Prestige?
P.S. When you've finished, go back and read the first chapter again. Go on. Didn't you forget that was there?
Edited a few days later to add: I've just been looking through notebooks from the last few months, ideas for stories I was playing with writing, and I totally had the idea for something remarkably similar to Priest's Glamour and being so easily forgettable (in fact, I pretty much brainstormed the character of Susan) all by myself in about September of this year. Slightly embarassingly, I've followed it up with the comment, "You could get the angstiest short story out of this. Go write a sad journal entry - or make her a bit character." I am so glad that someone else has written this and done it justice. But that's probably another reason this book struck so much of a chord with me. I am such a bloody amateur.
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February 4, 2024
Im Gedenken an den erst kürzlich verstorbenen Autor will ich versuchen, mir die Lektüre, die schon länger zurückliegt, zu vergegenwärtigen. Damals hat mich der Roman sehr fasziniert. Die Mischung aus psychologischer Phantastik und Science Fiction gefiel mir. Es geht um die Sichtbarkeit, bzw. die Möglichkeit sich dieser Sichtbarkeit zu entziehen. Im Zentrum steht ein Kameramann, eine Gestalt die ja per se Dinge sichtbar machen, dabei aber selbst gewissermaßen unsichtbar für andere bleiben will. Nach einem Anschag der IRA wacht er in einem Krankenhaus mit unvollständigen und seltsamen Erinnerungen auf. Spannend stellt hier Priest auch die Frage nach der Natur der Wirklicheit.
Priest hat hier seine Nische gefunden, nach eher konventionellen ersten Romanen. Viele meinen, dass er zu unrecht zu den wenig gelesenen gehört. Der Meinung schließe ich mich an, aber ich gehöre auch zu denen, die zuwenig von ihm gelesen haben.
Mein Exemplar ist vom Autor signiert, damals wurde er auf den Palatine-Con in Neustadt/Weinstraße eingeladen und ist mit seiner damaligen Ehefrau Leigh Kennedy gekommen. Diese Convention habe ich natürlich besucht, lag in der Nähe meines Wohnortes. Ist auch wieder bald 20 Jahre her.
Priest hat hier seine Nische gefunden, nach eher konventionellen ersten Romanen. Viele meinen, dass er zu unrecht zu den wenig gelesenen gehört. Der Meinung schließe ich mich an, aber ich gehöre auch zu denen, die zuwenig von ihm gelesen haben.
Mein Exemplar ist vom Autor signiert, damals wurde er auf den Palatine-Con in Neustadt/Weinstraße eingeladen und ist mit seiner damaligen Ehefrau Leigh Kennedy gekommen. Diese Convention habe ich natürlich besucht, lag in der Nähe meines Wohnortes. Ist auch wieder bald 20 Jahre her.
June 23, 2011
News photographer Richard Grey is recovering from an accident that has caused severe damage to his body and left him with gaps in his recent memory. In hospital, a young woman named Susan Kewley meets him, claiming that they were in a relationship during the time that he has forgotten. He cannot remember, but is nonetheless drawn to her. Hypnotherapy unearths memories of his time with her, he is declared cured of his amnesia and physically on the mend. He leaves the hospital and returns to London to resume his life and take up the threads of his now-remembered relationship with Sue.
But there are still mysteries. Who is Niall, Sue's persistent, obsessive but never-seen former lover? Why does Sue claim that she, Niall and Richard share an attribute that she calls 'the glamour'? Why do her memories of her relationship with Richard parallel yet contradict his own?
Who is it who is telling this story, in many voices, as the first chapter declares?
Priest takes us down as convoluted a roller-coaster between reality, illusion and shifting identities as Philip K Dick ever did. The story works brilliantly as an exploration of ideas of perception, awareness, deception and illusion.On the human level, the tortured relationship between Richard and Grey, with its moments of tenderness and its bouts of frustration is depicted absorbingly well and from multiple viewpoints. The tension mounts nicely, bringing us to a conclusion that is both unexpected and as open to interpretation and contemplation as Richard and Susan's differing views of what has gone on between them. All wrapped up in writing that is never less than effective and occasionally reaches little peaks of evocative beauty.
But there are still mysteries. Who is Niall, Sue's persistent, obsessive but never-seen former lover? Why does Sue claim that she, Niall and Richard share an attribute that she calls 'the glamour'? Why do her memories of her relationship with Richard parallel yet contradict his own?
Who is it who is telling this story, in many voices, as the first chapter declares?
Priest takes us down as convoluted a roller-coaster between reality, illusion and shifting identities as Philip K Dick ever did. The story works brilliantly as an exploration of ideas of perception, awareness, deception and illusion.On the human level, the tortured relationship between Richard and Grey, with its moments of tenderness and its bouts of frustration is depicted absorbingly well and from multiple viewpoints. The tension mounts nicely, bringing us to a conclusion that is both unexpected and as open to interpretation and contemplation as Richard and Susan's differing views of what has gone on between them. All wrapped up in writing that is never less than effective and occasionally reaches little peaks of evocative beauty.
June 28, 2011
I was really looking forward to this as Christopher Priest is yet to let me down. Pretty much everything I've read by him has been fantastic and this is no exception.
Again exploring themes common to Priest's other work; identity, memory and the human condition.
Written from a collection of narrative view points, some in first person, some in third person, Richard Grey is recovering from a car bomb attack both physically and mentally. He has no memory of the events in the few weeks leading up to the accident but a woman, Sue, comes to meet him and explains that they had an affair in that time which ended just before his accident. Richard is keen to rekindle what their relationship but must first attempt to learn what happened in that missing period of his memory and come to terms with some bizzare claims about invisibility.
I won't say anything about the twist at the end other than it was particularly clever in the way it is revealed, not through the way the plot unfolds, but from a shift in the narrative perspective.
Nice one Christopher and keep up the good work!
Again exploring themes common to Priest's other work; identity, memory and the human condition.
Written from a collection of narrative view points, some in first person, some in third person, Richard Grey is recovering from a car bomb attack both physically and mentally. He has no memory of the events in the few weeks leading up to the accident but a woman, Sue, comes to meet him and explains that they had an affair in that time which ended just before his accident. Richard is keen to rekindle what their relationship but must first attempt to learn what happened in that missing period of his memory and come to terms with some bizzare claims about invisibility.
I won't say anything about the twist at the end other than it was particularly clever in the way it is revealed, not through the way the plot unfolds, but from a shift in the narrative perspective.
Nice one Christopher and keep up the good work!
November 7, 2023
What on earth did I just read?!?
"The Glamour should be read rather than described in all its strange detail; hypnotic, tricky, uneasy and full of double meaning, it demands to be reread the moment you've finished."
- David Langford, December 1984 magazine review
Richard Grey, a cameraman for BBC news, doesn't remember the terrorist bomb that nearly killed him. He doesn't remember the weeks before it happened, either. And he certainly doesn't remember Susan Kewley, who claims to have been his girlfriend.
Okay, so this was weird! I've been stealing whatever time I could this morning to keep reading, trying to understand what was going on. Multiple narratives, different viewpoints, sometimes different stories. In some ways, this reminded me of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Total Recall," but with more layers. I probably won't go back and reread the book - at least not right now. I already went back and forth a number of times trying to sort out some of my confusion. (If you read: the story contains a lot of talk of sex - nothing especially graphic [mostly] - but it's just going on a lot, to the point of being a bit annoying, honestly.)
This was definitely a weird read... but very interesting.
"The Glamour should be read rather than described in all its strange detail; hypnotic, tricky, uneasy and full of double meaning, it demands to be reread the moment you've finished."
- David Langford, December 1984 magazine review
Richard Grey, a cameraman for BBC news, doesn't remember the terrorist bomb that nearly killed him. He doesn't remember the weeks before it happened, either. And he certainly doesn't remember Susan Kewley, who claims to have been his girlfriend.
Okay, so this was weird! I've been stealing whatever time I could this morning to keep reading, trying to understand what was going on. Multiple narratives, different viewpoints, sometimes different stories. In some ways, this reminded me of the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie "Total Recall," but with more layers. I probably won't go back and reread the book - at least not right now. I already went back and forth a number of times trying to sort out some of my confusion. (If you read: the story contains a lot of talk of sex - nothing especially graphic [mostly] - but it's just going on a lot, to the point of being a bit annoying, honestly.)
This was definitely a weird read... but very interesting.
September 18, 2018
(3.5) This Möbius strip of a novel did not fascinate me quite to the extent that The Affirmation did, though it certainly kept me turning the pages. It's the kind of novel one can blaze through reading for sheer pleasure of being caught up in the plot, or one can pick through the details, doubling and tripling back in the text, in an attempt to decode Priest's cryptographic prose. There is also the sociological commentary to ruminate on, which is compelling in its own right. At times, though, the artifice of the story felt a little too forced, and ultimately that's what lessened my enjoyment of the book as a whole. Still, I've got a few more Priest novels at home to work through, all of which are linked to the Dream Archipelago, which originated in The Affirmation. I look forward to returning to those islands.
September 28, 2017
Because Manny and Fiona's reviews make it sound intriguing, like a challenge just my size, and because I was provoked by his TT short story Palely Loitering.
........
Well. I suppose the author would hope I'd start my review with "Mind. Blown." But I won't, because it would be a lie. By the time I got to the end, had cut through all the BS, I didn't care. And the ending seemed to me like a cop-out. Sort of like Life of Pi. Ambiguity can be ok, philosophy can be ok, but if the author is just showing off how well they can reorganize an outline of a non-existent plot, or if he has a sense of spirituality that has no meaning, or if the blurb is totally misleading*, then, no, not for me.
*This is not SF!
And, trigger warning, a victim forgives her rapist, and the rape is graphically described.
........
Well. I suppose the author would hope I'd start my review with "Mind. Blown." But I won't, because it would be a lie. By the time I got to the end, had cut through all the BS, I didn't care. And the ending seemed to me like a cop-out. Sort of like Life of Pi. Ambiguity can be ok, philosophy can be ok, but if the author is just showing off how well they can reorganize an outline of a non-existent plot, or if he has a sense of spirituality that has no meaning, or if the blurb is totally misleading*, then, no, not for me.
*This is not SF!
And, trigger warning, a victim forgives her rapist, and the rape is graphically described.
June 4, 2023
While I loved The Prestige, The Glamour didn’t have me, nor did it keep me, and it ended with a thud. It’s ostensibly about a man who is struck by a bomb outside of a police building and his recovery, mostly to do with memory loss. It’s very slow and it ratchets up the tension with the fantastical, to do with the ritual Glamour. Some special people are dubbed invisibles, with the general population being unable to see them. It extends to what they interact with as well. And this notion is introduced by the primary opposite character, basically the only other character in the book: Sue. Who claims to be one of these people, as she attempts to reconnect with him and rekindle an odd relationship they had held before the event.
It’s fairly unconvincing but does become more so when this strange account of Sue’s is brought up, which deflates the tension around his false memories, as her account is from her own perspective, so more-or-less invalidates his memories. But even more annoying than that, is none of that even matters. It’s not actually about what it purports to be and transitions into some outlandish supernatural horror aspects, including a very graphic, horrific rape - followed by Sue becoming an even more unbelievable character, as she gets over this violation quickly and the relationship with the rapist completely uninhibited. Then the plot itself, also is completely eschewed on a flight of fancy / gotcha moment.
There isn’t much that it particularly has to say and it doesn’t even respect the fiction it creates. It is very near completely pointless and there are many other novels with a meta context that makes this point much more interestingly.
It’s fairly unconvincing but does become more so when this strange account of Sue’s is brought up, which deflates the tension around his false memories, as her account is from her own perspective, so more-or-less invalidates his memories. But even more annoying than that, is none of that even matters. It’s not actually about what it purports to be and transitions into some outlandish supernatural horror aspects, including a very graphic, horrific rape - followed by Sue becoming an even more unbelievable character, as she gets over this violation quickly and the relationship with the rapist completely uninhibited. Then the plot itself, also is completely eschewed on a flight of fancy / gotcha moment.
There isn’t much that it particularly has to say and it doesn’t even respect the fiction it creates. It is very near completely pointless and there are many other novels with a meta context that makes this point much more interestingly.
September 15, 2016
Priest es una maravilla contando historias que no son lo que parecen ser. Somos enfrentados a la angustia del protagonista; Richard, quien, luego de un accidente, queda amnésico y descubre, gracias a una novia; que ambos poseen (por extraño que parezca) el glamour: el poder de pasar desapercibidos, de no ser vistos. Este poder es compartido por un ex novio, quien aparece para formar un extraño triángulo amoroso, porque su poder es tal, que ni siquiera puede ser visto por Richard. Comienza a escalar la violencia, porque es un don que puede usarse muy mal. Es muy inquietante y Priest es un maestro en narrar historias y crear atmósferas donde nada queda muy claro, usando el abuso y control de los personajes mediante un poder que ni siquiera puede ser real, genera las páginas más inquietantes que ha escrito Priest.
September 2, 2013
If I could strike the entire last chapter and somehow force a new one I would. Until I reached it I was ready to give this a solid five stars and then ... blup. A nasty wet soft slap of ... I don't know what. I'll give Priest the benefit of the doubt and assume that this was his intended ending all along but it sure did feel like he wrote himself into a corner and gave up.
But still! Everything leading up to that was a great example of not only an unreliable narrator but unreliable narrators plural plus the sense that even the author was giving false details in the passages written in the third person. I felt like Priest was really reaching and building and trying to create an ultimate thesis on the glamour and then just kind of fizzled. Oh well. Still was a really good ride up to that point.
But still! Everything leading up to that was a great example of not only an unreliable narrator but unreliable narrators plural plus the sense that even the author was giving false details in the passages written in the third person. I felt like Priest was really reaching and building and trying to create an ultimate thesis on the glamour and then just kind of fizzled. Oh well. Still was a really good ride up to that point.
January 18, 2018
Unreliable narrators are a tricky game. Readers are willing to be led around until they’re not; push too hard and what was once fun feels like a flimsy trick. The Glamour tiptoes this line again and again, then doubles back and folds in on itself in ways that make the (many) unreliable narrators and their stories look like an interstate pileup – detangling the truth from the lies is near impossible. Then again, every word in any novel is a reality construct, so who’s fooling who? Or allowing themselves to be fooled? A mostly fun existential questions book delivered in the package of psychological horror. But even at just over 200 pages, it’s more than plenty to jackhammer home the point.
March 20, 2020
Starts off as an engaging and heart-rendering love story, and then turns into something else altogether. One of Priest's best.
March 29, 2022
How do we know our memories are real and not just a story written by some unknown person?
February 9, 2017
How do you become invisible without becoming actually invisible? Hang onto that question, because it matters.
I've read a good chunk of Christopher Priest's body of work, and this one might just be my favorite of his novels. It's a tightly constructed psychological thriller that not only places its characters in tense situations, but continuously undermines the reader's confidence in what seem to be the underlying realities of the story.
This may sound gimmicky, but Priest, at his cool, precise best, is a master of games, illusions, and misdirection, painting pictures that at first appear to be one thing, but are revealed to be something else entirely when the perspective shifts (of course, there are plenty of clues that you won't think much of as they pass you by, but will jump out later). And the puzzles aren't meaningless fluff; they invite contemplation of significant human themes.
Plotwise, this novel seems ordinary enough at first. A young man named Richard is recovering in hospital from the aftereffects of being caught near a car bomb explosion, which include some amnesia. He's visited by a young woman named Susan, whom he can't remember, but who claims to have been his lover during the weeks before the blast.
Another narrative section (shifting from third to first person voice) fills in what seems to be the backstory. Richard is on holiday in France and meets Susan on a train. The two quickly fall for each other, but their love affair is gradually soured by the offstage presence of Susan's controlling, possessive ex-lover, Niall, who maintains a mysterious and seemingly unbreakable hold over her, much to Richard's frustration and anger.
Then, the novel takes a turn into some strange territory, somewhat reminiscent, I thought, of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. We get Susan's version of events, which contains some notable factual differences from Richard's, but also ascribes semi-fantastical powers to her and to Niall, who takes on a whole new level of sulky menace once the extent of their disturbing codependency is clear. But, this is Christopher Priest, and there are reasons not to take Susan's account entirely at face value, to suspect that author is playing further tricks on us.
Which, of course, he is, and the hints are there from page one. The turns that follow kept me glued to my reading device, and when Priest finally drops the floor in the last pages, it's a metaphysical mind-bender, revealing that Richard, Susan, and Niall might not be quite what we thought they were. So, what are they, then? That question kept my mind occupied for a while (hint: reread the first chapter), but the more I pondered, the more the conclusion clicked with the novel's interrelated themes of identity, memory, and visibility. What does it mean, in terms of human experience, to be "visible" (or not)?
Naturally, I'm putting this question in purposefully broads terms, so as to not spoil what I think is a gripping reading experience, but I'm not sure I need to make it more specific. Just keep it to the side, let your mind make its own connections, and enjoy this brilliant novel. It's the sort of work that might result if someone found a way to take the hamfistedness out of Gone Girl and the movie Inception, and combined them both into something quietly, unsettlingly mind-blowing. And did so thirty years earlier.
Audiobook narrator Barnaby Edwards is a good fit for Priest's style of writing, which maintains a certain level of emotional distance, but is able to be expressive when the moods of the characters warrant it. Some of his voices for minor characters sound a little cartoonish, but his use of different British regional accents for the major ones was a helpful cue.
I've read a good chunk of Christopher Priest's body of work, and this one might just be my favorite of his novels. It's a tightly constructed psychological thriller that not only places its characters in tense situations, but continuously undermines the reader's confidence in what seem to be the underlying realities of the story.
This may sound gimmicky, but Priest, at his cool, precise best, is a master of games, illusions, and misdirection, painting pictures that at first appear to be one thing, but are revealed to be something else entirely when the perspective shifts (of course, there are plenty of clues that you won't think much of as they pass you by, but will jump out later). And the puzzles aren't meaningless fluff; they invite contemplation of significant human themes.
Plotwise, this novel seems ordinary enough at first. A young man named Richard is recovering in hospital from the aftereffects of being caught near a car bomb explosion, which include some amnesia. He's visited by a young woman named Susan, whom he can't remember, but who claims to have been his lover during the weeks before the blast.
Another narrative section (shifting from third to first person voice) fills in what seems to be the backstory. Richard is on holiday in France and meets Susan on a train. The two quickly fall for each other, but their love affair is gradually soured by the offstage presence of Susan's controlling, possessive ex-lover, Niall, who maintains a mysterious and seemingly unbreakable hold over her, much to Richard's frustration and anger.
Then, the novel takes a turn into some strange territory, somewhat reminiscent, I thought, of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. We get Susan's version of events, which contains some notable factual differences from Richard's, but also ascribes semi-fantastical powers to her and to Niall, who takes on a whole new level of sulky menace once the extent of their disturbing codependency is clear. But, this is Christopher Priest, and there are reasons not to take Susan's account entirely at face value, to suspect that author is playing further tricks on us.
Which, of course, he is, and the hints are there from page one. The turns that follow kept me glued to my reading device, and when Priest finally drops the floor in the last pages, it's a metaphysical mind-bender, revealing that Richard, Susan, and Niall might not be quite what we thought they were. So, what are they, then? That question kept my mind occupied for a while (hint: reread the first chapter), but the more I pondered, the more the conclusion clicked with the novel's interrelated themes of identity, memory, and visibility. What does it mean, in terms of human experience, to be "visible" (or not)?
Naturally, I'm putting this question in purposefully broads terms, so as to not spoil what I think is a gripping reading experience, but I'm not sure I need to make it more specific. Just keep it to the side, let your mind make its own connections, and enjoy this brilliant novel. It's the sort of work that might result if someone found a way to take the hamfistedness out of Gone Girl and the movie Inception, and combined them both into something quietly, unsettlingly mind-blowing. And did so thirty years earlier.
Audiobook narrator Barnaby Edwards is a good fit for Priest's style of writing, which maintains a certain level of emotional distance, but is able to be expressive when the moods of the characters warrant it. Some of his voices for minor characters sound a little cartoonish, but his use of different British regional accents for the major ones was a helpful cue.
Read
September 28, 2012Disappointing.
January 8, 2014
good read, the other world is very inviting however feels remote and unattainable
April 14, 2024
Well this was a shame.
The story started out well, a man recovering from a trauma with amnesia and buried memories. Throughout his convalescence, his (ex-?) girlfriend appears to help him remember the past. The storytelling here is great, vivid descriptions, good dialogue, realistic scenarios. But there are hints of future fuckery afoot! Remember the cloud!!!!
So the second "half" of the book as it were, looks at the protagonist's experience post-discharge from hospital, dealing with reintegrating into life with said girlfriend and slowly remembering details of before the trauma. And this is where it descends into surrealism. Priest throws a sci-fi/alt universe slant on the proceedings and asks us to suspend reality completely in this part of the story, and it's a stretch too far in my opinion. The plot just becomes silly and unrealistic and the well crafted work of the first half seems to disintegrate before our eyes. I slogged it out until the end and was left with a feeling of "meh" (yes I know meh isn't cool any more but it perfectly sums up my feeling at reaching the last page!)
Disappointing. This could have been amazing but Priest went and did us a dirty.
The story started out well, a man recovering from a trauma with amnesia and buried memories. Throughout his convalescence, his (ex-?) girlfriend appears to help him remember the past. The storytelling here is great, vivid descriptions, good dialogue, realistic scenarios. But there are hints of future fuckery afoot! Remember the cloud!!!!
So the second "half" of the book as it were, looks at the protagonist's experience post-discharge from hospital, dealing with reintegrating into life with said girlfriend and slowly remembering details of before the trauma. And this is where it descends into surrealism. Priest throws a sci-fi/alt universe slant on the proceedings and asks us to suspend reality completely in this part of the story, and it's a stretch too far in my opinion. The plot just becomes silly and unrealistic and the well crafted work of the first half seems to disintegrate before our eyes. I slogged it out until the end and was left with a feeling of "meh" (yes I know meh isn't cool any more but it perfectly sums up my feeling at reaching the last page!)
Disappointing. This could have been amazing but Priest went and did us a dirty.
January 23, 2020
"His mind told him stories and sequences of events that had a shallow plausibility, but they did not feel as if they had really happened." Priest thematically plays with memory, identity, perception and reality while constantly misdirecting the reader. This is a meta-fiction (some reviewers even call it an "anti-novel") that will keep you intrigued and confused to the very end... However, I'm not sure how I feel about the ending, to be honest. (3.5 stars)
January 7, 2021
Hmm! It's not often I finish a book and immediately want to start reading it again just to find out what the hell just happened! This story just keeps on twisting around, presenting new versions of itself and lulling you into thinking you know exactly what is going on, when you're actually just as much in the dark as our amnesiac main character - or is he the main character at all? Does the Glamour actually exist? Or is it some mass fantasy or something in the imagination of someone else? Confusing, frustrating, compelling and utterly readable - totally recommended.
October 10, 2022
It’s been a long time since I’ve finished a novel and immediately wanted to re-read it. I’m glad I went into this blind.
December 17, 2022
A compelling novel that maintains a quantum relationship between what is real and what is fiction, what has happened and what has arisen from a false memory, and what is sanity and what is insanity.
March 7, 2022
Oh man. I feel like this novel could have been great and very satisfying. It is immersively written in a way I really enjoy, the kind of book you can blitz through on a Saturday afternoon. Very useful when you have a Reading Challenge to complete! The central mystery, of a man trying to recover his memories after an accident, is one you can imagine an excellent author like Christopher Priest really getting his teeth into, delivering a plot twist that makes us go, "!!"
Sadly this novel did not, for me, live up to its initial promise. The much-telegraphed and foreshadowed twist is a damp squib that actually undermines the emotional impact of the story. To me, a satisfying literary twist is one that upholds the contract between author and reader, and doesn't pull the rug out from under the reader entirely. You want to feel that the author has played fair, and I did not feel this way with this book. Priest's novel The Prestige offers a vastly superior example in how to do this effectively.
In addition, and this is typical of many novels written by male authors in the 80s, the female characters are thinly disguised male fantasies, constantly sexually available, portrayed and couched entirely in terms of their sexual appeal .
Sadly this novel did not, for me, live up to its initial promise. The much-telegraphed and foreshadowed twist is a damp squib that actually undermines the emotional impact of the story. To me, a satisfying literary twist is one that upholds the contract between author and reader, and doesn't pull the rug out from under the reader entirely. You want to feel that the author has played fair, and I did not feel this way with this book. Priest's novel The Prestige offers a vastly superior example in how to do this effectively.
In addition, and this is typical of many novels written by male authors in the 80s, the female characters are thinly disguised male fantasies, constantly sexually available, portrayed and couched entirely in terms of their sexual appeal .
July 12, 2014
Give it 3.5.
This is a tough book to review. I'm not even sure what genre it slips into. It's well written by a competent author, but I found myself getting very frustrated a times throughout. Yet how much of that frustration was just me being manipulated by the author in conveying the frustration of his characters?
Richard Grey, convalescing in hospital after extensive injuries sustained in a bomb attack and suffering amnesia is visited by an odd woman claiming to be from his past. Richard sees this woman as the key to unlocking his lost memories. What follows is an queer story about hidden people moving about the world, the nature of our own realities and the strain and pressures this puts on relationships.
The story shifts perspectives and tense, a tricky skill for any author to successfully deliver and I did find it somewhat disconcerting at times, but generally well executed. At other times, the overly-long retelling of the backstory by main character's love interest dragged for me with the story seem to wonder aimless for stretches. I also found Sue's inability to leave her former lover behind frustrating, but reflecting on it, it doesn't seem too far from stories you read about women who keep returning to abusive relationships - is this another success of the writer?
To it's credit, The Glamour is a thoughtful psychological study though I did find it a somewhat lacking in highs and lows tension-wise.
This is a tough book to review. I'm not even sure what genre it slips into. It's well written by a competent author, but I found myself getting very frustrated a times throughout. Yet how much of that frustration was just me being manipulated by the author in conveying the frustration of his characters?
Richard Grey, convalescing in hospital after extensive injuries sustained in a bomb attack and suffering amnesia is visited by an odd woman claiming to be from his past. Richard sees this woman as the key to unlocking his lost memories. What follows is an queer story about hidden people moving about the world, the nature of our own realities and the strain and pressures this puts on relationships.
The story shifts perspectives and tense, a tricky skill for any author to successfully deliver and I did find it somewhat disconcerting at times, but generally well executed. At other times, the overly-long retelling of the backstory by main character's love interest dragged for me with the story seem to wonder aimless for stretches. I also found Sue's inability to leave her former lover behind frustrating, but reflecting on it, it doesn't seem too far from stories you read about women who keep returning to abusive relationships - is this another success of the writer?
To it's credit, The Glamour is a thoughtful psychological study though I did find it a somewhat lacking in highs and lows tension-wise.
February 5, 2017
Personaggi poco simpatici.
Christopher Priest è un autore con idee molto originali, come confermano gli ottimi romanzi che ho apprezzato in passato (“Il mondo alla rovescia” e “Esperienze estreme”) ed anche “The Prestige” di cui conosco il bel film ma non il libro.
Questa volta tuttavia c’è un problema: le idee, che pure non mancano a partire dall’elemento portante dell’intricato soggetto da non rivelare per evitare spoiler, sono letteralmente affogate nella melodrammatica storia di un triangolo amoroso al punto che, dopo un inizio interessante, il romanzo tende ad estenuare il lettore e, almeno a tratti, ad annoiarlo a morte.
“The Glamour”, che è il titolo originale, sembra proprio tirato via nella sua parte centrale, non so giudicare se per colpa della traduzione o per colpa di Priest, con quel monotono vagare dei personaggi da una città all’altra perennemente alle prese con problemi irrisolti, discussioni, infinite separazioni e ricongiungimenti.
Sebbene la vicenda amorosa non rappresenti il fulcro della trama, che presenta risvolti ben più intriganti e suggestivi, ad essa viene riservata una parte talmente preponderante del romanzo da impedirne il decollo verso ciò che poteva essere con una rappresentazione più stringata delle ripercussioni dell’”incanto” su personaggi tutto sommato convenzionali ed anche poco “simpatici”, nel senso etimologico dell’aggettivo, cioè tali da indurre (nel lettore) la condivisione delle emozioni.
Christopher Priest è un autore con idee molto originali, come confermano gli ottimi romanzi che ho apprezzato in passato (“Il mondo alla rovescia” e “Esperienze estreme”) ed anche “The Prestige” di cui conosco il bel film ma non il libro.
Questa volta tuttavia c’è un problema: le idee, che pure non mancano a partire dall’elemento portante dell’intricato soggetto da non rivelare per evitare spoiler, sono letteralmente affogate nella melodrammatica storia di un triangolo amoroso al punto che, dopo un inizio interessante, il romanzo tende ad estenuare il lettore e, almeno a tratti, ad annoiarlo a morte.
“The Glamour”, che è il titolo originale, sembra proprio tirato via nella sua parte centrale, non so giudicare se per colpa della traduzione o per colpa di Priest, con quel monotono vagare dei personaggi da una città all’altra perennemente alle prese con problemi irrisolti, discussioni, infinite separazioni e ricongiungimenti.
Sebbene la vicenda amorosa non rappresenti il fulcro della trama, che presenta risvolti ben più intriganti e suggestivi, ad essa viene riservata una parte talmente preponderante del romanzo da impedirne il decollo verso ciò che poteva essere con una rappresentazione più stringata delle ripercussioni dell’”incanto” su personaggi tutto sommato convenzionali ed anche poco “simpatici”, nel senso etimologico dell’aggettivo, cioè tali da indurre (nel lettore) la condivisione delle emozioni.
November 19, 2016
Christopher Priest is a seriously under-rated novelist. Maybe the 'literary' world looked askance at his early SF (even he isn't sure what he meant by calling his first novel 'Indoctrinaire'), and 'Fugue for a Darkening Island' remains a pretty harrowing read. Whatever the reason, Priest has never had the acclaim he deserves.
'The Glamour' is just tricksy enough - I couldn't handle 'The Separation', and his new novel sounds fairly brain-stretching too. This one however is beautifully composed, with Priest's rather flat prose perfectly suited to an ordinary world that isn't as it seems. The non-linear structure makes the rediscovery of Richard's past mysterious and compelling, and the characterisation is very convincing. I love the moment when Richard thinks his flat has lost a room in his absence.
I read somewhere that there are two editions of 'The Glamour', and the revised one makes everything a little clearer. Mine is the original though, and wonderfully Weird it is. If you think this is just another thriller about amnesia, think again.
'The Glamour' is just tricksy enough - I couldn't handle 'The Separation', and his new novel sounds fairly brain-stretching too. This one however is beautifully composed, with Priest's rather flat prose perfectly suited to an ordinary world that isn't as it seems. The non-linear structure makes the rediscovery of Richard's past mysterious and compelling, and the characterisation is very convincing. I love the moment when Richard thinks his flat has lost a room in his absence.
I read somewhere that there are two editions of 'The Glamour', and the revised one makes everything a little clearer. Mine is the original though, and wonderfully Weird it is. If you think this is just another thriller about amnesia, think again.
September 27, 2016
This book was recommended to me, and, of course, I was instantly connected to the 'glamour' element. I love this play on the mind, tricking, shifting. The story of Grey has you wanting to turn the pages. A need to solve the riddle of invisibility, of relationships caught in a complex tale of possibilities. I found myself pondering further on 'what ifs'...some books are brilliant in making you extend imagination beyond the normal mindset. This is one of them. A great psychological read and talented writer.
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