Book cover for Brilliant Creatures

Brilliant Creatures

Synopsis

Details

28 March 2013
320 pages
9781447235255
Imprint: Picador

Reviews

The brilliant creatures of the title live in a world of lost innocence and vast incomes; publishers, writers, media men and consultants, they belong to a charmed circle where everyone knows everybody else’s business and thinks it the most important thing in life. It’s all marvellously clever; Clive James doesn’t miss a trick. It’s funny too. Enjoy, enjoy.
James is up on a tightrope of style, wobbling away, relentlessly funny. James’s achievement, beyond the fizz and the jokes, is to have created characters who begin to be likeable, and who make and live with a decision worth pondering.
I thought I was going to hate Brilliant Creatures, the first novel by Clive James. But before long I found myself greatly enjoying this romping satire of London literary life. The chief pleasure of Brilliant Creatures lies in the writing, which sizzles off the page with a rare merriment.
Foaming with ideas and afterthoughts and after-afterthoughts, Clive James’s first novel is a joy to read. He is nearer to Wodehouse than to Waugh. He is not setting out merely to raise laughs. He takes vigorous swipes at most of the unacceptable faces of society, and, as with all good satirists, there is venom in the indignation.