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Brilliant Creatures by Clive James

by
November 1983, no. 56

Brilliant Creatures by Clive James

Jonathan Cape, $15.95 pb, 288 pp, 0224021222

Brilliant Creatures by Clive James

by
November 1983, no. 56

Brilliant Creatures is not so much a novel – a first novel, as the title page coyly points out – as it is a presentation pack. The text itself is bookended by an introduction at the front, and a set of extensive, very boring notes and index at the back. A set of notes and an index for a novel, a first novel? Yep. Clive James has heard of Nabokov and Pale Fire. He has also, as the four-page introduction makes clear, heard of his ‘illustrious ancestor Henry’: of Gide, Montaigne, Sterne, Peacock, Firbank, Trollope, Joyce, Shakespeare, and Nietzsche.

Laurie Clancy reviews 'Brilliant Creatures' by Clive James

Brilliant Creatures

by Clive James

Jonathan Cape, $15.95 pb, 288 pp, 0224021222

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