return to worldwidereview.com,
the home of critical reviews
From: Meg Category: Books Date: 06 June 2007 Time: 07:20 AM Review: I found this book at a market stall, surprised to learn that P.D. Ouspensky had written a novel (I have only read his philosophical/mystical writings). The beginning reads a little like a film script, stiff and jolted (it provided inspiration for Groundhog Day) - and I thought that perhaps it was best that this was his only piece of fiction. However as it progresses this style works really well, it adds to the narrative of the hero living his life again, watching and aware that this is how it was the first time he lived it; it adds a distance, the sense of actors on a stage who we are powerless to influence, powerless to avert from the accidents and mistakes he and we know he is to make. It adds to the sense of frustration that one has when watching a film and it is this that pulls the reader along, hoping that next time he will make the right move to get the woman, the job, the success he deserves. It explains well the frustration and boredom of school, the seeming impossibility of getting down to work, the constant barriers we put between ourselves and the ends we mean to meet, endlessly procrastinating. Kind of brilliant and depressing. Perhaps my low expectations have made me more enthusiastic than the book deserves, perhaps my past seeped as it is with these ideas allows the book to resonate within where it may not for others. The end is some what dull and definitely Gurdjieffian, a call that I am all too familiar with - extra effort is needed if we want to escape ourselves our patterns, if we want to get beyond ourselves and reach immortality. (I'd rather have a lie in)