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Amazon.co.uk Review
A brothel-keeper's sons discuss genocide and plot murder; a young alien wanderer is pursued by his shadow double; a political prisoner tries to prove his identity, not least to himself. Gene Wolfe's first novel consists of three linked sections, all of them elegant broodings on identity, sameness and strangeness, and all of them set on the vividly evoked colony worlds of Ste. Croix and Ste. Anne, themselves twins delicately poised in mutual orbit. Marsch, victim in the third story, is the apparent author of the second and a casual visitor whose naïve questions precipitate tragedy in the first; the sections dance around each other like the planets of their setting. Clones, down-loaded personalities inhabiting robots, aliens that perhaps mimicked humans so successfully that they forgot who they were, a French culture adopted by its ruthless oppressors--there are a lot of ways to lose yourself, and perhaps the worst is to think that freedom consists of owning other people, that identity is won at the expense of others. It is easy to be impressed by the intellectual games of Wolfe's stunning book, and forget that he is, and always has been, the most intensely moral of SF writers. --Roz Kaveney
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
"Gene Wolfe is unique. If there were forty or fifty of this first-rate author--no, let's be reasonable and ask Higher Authorities for only four or five--American literature as a whole would be enormously enriched." --"Chicago Sun-Times"
"One of the major fictional works of the decade...Wolfe's novel, with its elusiveness and its beauty, haunts one long after reading it." --Pamela Sargent
"A richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity and individuality." --Malcolm Edwards, "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia"
"SF for the thinking reader..The style is highly literate and the ideas sophisticated and handled with sensitivity." --"Amazing SF"
"One of the 100 best science fiction novels...A truly extraordinary work. One of the most cunningly wrought narratives in the whole of modern SF, a masterpiece of misdirection, subtle clues, and apparently casual revelations." --David Pringle
"One of the major fictional works of the decade...Wolfe's novel, with its elusiveness and its beauty, haunts one long after reading it." --Pamela Sargent
"A richly imaginative exploration of the nature of identity and individuality." --Malcolm Edwards, "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia"
"SF for the thinking reader..The style is highly literate and the ideas sophisticated and handled with sensitivity." --"Amazing SF"
"One of the 100 best science fiction novels...A truly extraordinary work. One of the most cunningly wrought narratives in the whole of modern SF, a masterpiece of misdirection, subtle clues, and apparently casual revelations." --David Pringle
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First Sentence
When I was a boy my brother David and I had to go to bed early whether we were sleepy or not. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
When I was a boy my brother David and I had to go to bed early whether we were sleepy or not. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is by no means an easy book to fully understand, but it's phenomonally rewarding if you put in the effort.
It's a lyrical meditation on identity and the self; some of the passages in the second of the three novellas which make up the body of this work are particularly beautiful, and to my mind at least it's a joy to read.
It's complicated, though. The three novellas are interlinked but not particularly similar; each has its own style and identity (or is that too loaded a word to use in the context of the ideas contained in the book?). Despite this, you won't understand completely what is going on in any until you've read all three, and even then it's a matter of putting together clues that are not always obvious. they are there though, and careful study reveals them.
When you finally manage to put it all together and step back, you see the book as the complex and magnificent clockwork it is, with gears and cogs from each of the novellas turning harmoniously within their story and without - interacting with the themes and events of the other novellas to allow a fuller comprehension of the frightening implications of the events of the entire book.
you can't trust the narrator in any of the stories, because the narrators can't trust themselves. they don't know who they are.
It's a lyrical meditation on identity and the self; some of the passages in the second of the three novellas which make up the body of this work are particularly beautiful, and to my mind at least it's a joy to read.
It's complicated, though. The three novellas are interlinked but not particularly similar; each has its own style and identity (or is that too loaded a word to use in the context of the ideas contained in the book?). Despite this, you won't understand completely what is going on in any until you've read all three, and even then it's a matter of putting together clues that are not always obvious. they are there though, and careful study reveals them.
When you finally manage to put it all together and step back, you see the book as the complex and magnificent clockwork it is, with gears and cogs from each of the novellas turning harmoniously within their story and without - interacting with the themes and events of the other novellas to allow a fuller comprehension of the frightening implications of the events of the entire book.
you can't trust the narrator in any of the stories, because the narrators can't trust themselves. they don't know who they are.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not everyone will like this book; in the same way as not everyone will like (or, more simply, have time for) Joyce or Proust. I don't mean that Wolfe writes like either of these. But rather, in the particular work (and others) he needs patience, the right mood, and the right expectations before you will get what he is trying to tell you (or, confusingly, not tell you! :).
I generally dislike writers who whose works aim simply to manipulate the imaginations of the reader for no particular purpose - for example "deconstructionalists" and the rest of the postmodernists whose goal appears to be to demonstrate their own cleverness at the expense of producing anything readable or entertaining. In "The Fifth Head", Wolfe takes one idea from that school - namely, that you can tell a story only by hinting at it - and turns it into magic, while at the same time never insulting the readers intelligence.
I confess I've never enjoyed any book that has attempted something like this, before "The Fifth Head of Cerberus". When you have read all three novellas, you realise - slowly - that there is another, internal work that is both parallel to, and in contradiction to, the written words. It's hard to explain, and surely a hundred times harder to write.
To those who didn't enjoy the work on the first reading, I would say to wait a couple of years and try it again. It is one of the most rewarding works in SF or in any genre that I have read, and it deserves the deepest reflection.
I generally dislike writers who whose works aim simply to manipulate the imaginations of the reader for no particular purpose - for example "deconstructionalists" and the rest of the postmodernists whose goal appears to be to demonstrate their own cleverness at the expense of producing anything readable or entertaining. In "The Fifth Head", Wolfe takes one idea from that school - namely, that you can tell a story only by hinting at it - and turns it into magic, while at the same time never insulting the readers intelligence.
I confess I've never enjoyed any book that has attempted something like this, before "The Fifth Head of Cerberus". When you have read all three novellas, you realise - slowly - that there is another, internal work that is both parallel to, and in contradiction to, the written words. It's hard to explain, and surely a hundred times harder to write.
To those who didn't enjoy the work on the first reading, I would say to wait a couple of years and try it again. It is one of the most rewarding works in SF or in any genre that I have read, and it deserves the deepest reflection.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Having just finished this novel, I can honestly say I am stunned. It is one of those tours de force that leave you unable to decide exactly what was going on. It is a novel that leaves you to draw your own conclusions. Are all the characters aliens who think they are humans? or do the humans and aliens co-exist without ever realising it? or were there never really any aliens, just degenerate human survivors from and earlier era? Were the aliens figments of human imagination, or are all these speculations red herrings?
In short, this novel does what all great works of art do - it gives you plenty of room to shape your own meanings out of the text rather than impose them on you. In fact it is not really a novel at all - the three interlinking stories stand alone in themselves, but each one only becomes complete in light of the other two.
You will either love this, or hate it. If you like your endings neatly tied together, with all the mysteries explained in a strong dénouement, then avoid this book, and everything else by Wolfe. If you enjoy an intellectual and moral puzzle, then read this, not once, but over again (I am putting in my agenda to re-read in a year, to see if I come up with other conclusions than I did the first time round). A true classic of this or any genre.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Hugely subtle and deeply satisfying
This is the most interesting book I've read in a long time. It's the first time I've read Gene Wolfe, but I've known for a while that he is thought by many to be the most... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Barry Bootle
Inventive but at times quite difficult to read
I really liked the first story, got very bored with the second one, started off really liking the third story but got quite irritated with it. Read more
Published 14 months ago by The Emperor
Not my cup of tea
I really tried with this book, I didn't like the first novella but I kept on going and read the second. Read more
Published on 25 May 2010 by Dan Ormisher
MUCH better than I expected
I kept glossing over this book in the library, despite the fact that I had read the Book of the New Sun previously and loved it, because it had some lousy-sounding synopsis on the... Read more
Published on 28 Nov 2006 by IL
Lost in Space
I purchased this as I'd heard so much about Wolfe's writing and the books qualities. Unfortunately the experience left me totally lost when I read it. Read more
Published on 24 Sep 2005
Too clever
I bought this novel (first pub. 1973) because it was in David Pringle's "Science Fiction the 100 Best Novels". Read more
Published on 4 Dec 2002 by R. J. Hole
Perhaps an interesting excercise
One might say that using short stories to build a novel was a brave attempt to break the mould, but I couldn't help getting the feeling that this work was more like an exercise the... Read more
Published on 16 Sep 2002 by "amdarley"
A measured work of genius
Upon first reading this novel you may well be left bemused by all the accolades that this work has received. Don't let that worry you. Read more
Published on 5 Sep 2002 by Mr Stephen J Gaskell
Nearly Made Me Give Up SF
As you can probably ascertain from other reviews on this site, this book isn't for everyone. I personally found the three vaguely interconnected stories uninteresting and... Read more
Published on 19 Mar 2002
absolutely wonderful
this book is nothing that i expected it to be. it blew me away. the three novellas connect to hint at a story that is not there. Read more
Published on 4 Mar 2002
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