- Paperback: 1120 pages
- Publisher: Overlook Press; New edition edition (24 Jun 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 087951681X
- ISBN-13: 978-0879516819
- Product Dimensions: 19 x 13.6 x 4.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 766,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Review
"To encounter [Powys]... is to arrive at the very fount of creation. He makes us witnessof the consuming fire which rages throughout the universe entire and which gives not warmth nor enlightenment, but enduring vision, enduring strength, and enduring courage." -Henry Miller "This is a... great novel. It stands as a gigantic rebuke to a time of minimum-risk writers and readers, and I hope that many among them will be encouraged to attempt it." -The Chicago Tribune"
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
In this novel, Glastonbury and its legends, both Christian and pagan, expert a supernatural influence on the life of the town - on the religious revival led by Johnny Geard, on the hard commercial interests of Phil Crow, and on the complex loves, both sacred and sexual, of the town's inhabitants.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
21 of 21 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In some ways this is the most amazing novel I have ever encountered. Its imaginative range, its gorgeous language, and its mesmeric power lift it far above almost anything else. Some of the characters and images - Geard, the mayor and founder of a new religion; Evans, the tortured antiquary; the haunting vision of the Grail-Aquarium; and the invisible naturalists studying the town's population all come to mind - are unforgettably original. The book is by turns sinister, astonishing, mystical and comic. Think of a kind of Dickens meets Hardy meets Lawrence meets Blake, and you'll have some idea of what to expect.
The last two names point also, unfortunately, to the book's flaws. Like Lawrence, Powys can be embarrassingly gushing, and like Blake he can bore or bewilder when he isn't firing on all cylinders. His mystical flights occasionally spill over into bathos! and his style moves from the sublime to the downright infuriating! In particular, I really wish he had vowed never to use another exclamation mark before beginning this book! More broadly, the text is very long indeed and needs some determination in places.
But these are trivial complaints. Powys is a truly unique writer in the whole history of English literature, and his intricate, minutely-detailed yet cosmic vision is one you'll never forget. Not light reading, but the rewards along the way dwarf those of most other twentieth-century works.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
In some ways this is the most amazing novel I have ever encountered. Its imaginative range, its gorgeous language, and its mesmeric power lift it far above almost anything else. Some of the characters and images - Geard, the mayor and founder of a new religion; Evans, the tortured antiquary; the haunting vision of the Grail-Aquarium; and the invisible naturalists studying the town's population all come to mind - are unforgettably original. The book is by turns sinister, astonishing, mystical and comic. Think of a kind of Dickens meets Hardy meets Lawrence meets Blake, and you'll have some idea of what to expect.
The last two names point also, unfortunately, to the book's flaws. Like Lawrence, Powys can be embarrassingly gushing, and like Blake he can bore or bewilder when he isn't firing on all cylinders. His mystical flights occasionally spill over into bathos! and his style moves from the sublime to the downright infuriating! In particular, I really wish he had taken some sort of vow never to use another exclamation mark before beginning this book! More broadly, the text is very long indeed and needs some determination in places.
But these are trivial complaints. Powys is a truly unique writer in the whole history of English literature, and his intricate, minutely-detailed yet cosmic vision is one you'll never forget. Not light reading, but the rewards along the way dwarf virtually any other twentieth-century work.
24 of 26 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
25 years ago I bought this book, more on account of the beautiful cover than on the content, and on the somewhat cryptic summary that this would be the Lord of the Rings for a new generation. As noticed by others it was difficult to get through the first pages and I laid aside my brand new edition for a while - 25 years. After some maturation I've picked it up again this year and I'm surprised how complex and intriguing this Fellowship of Glastonbury inhabitants actually is. A mixture of pagan, druidic, christian and arthurian believes with a large portion of greek mythology and the most complex of mental states, namely being in love, makes this book a stunning adventure and more up to date in a world that contemplates these issues more intensly than ever. It's also fascinating that all these thoughts were concentrated in the mind of one writer and that this mind could focus them within the environment of some old ruins coming to life through these eternal questions that his characters are possesed by. Through the increasing strength of TV-satellites and IT websites many of these different and dispersed believes of our world come together today, but they will not get a much better setting than the one of John Cowper Powys' Glastonbury. Highly recommended!!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Oh God please deliver me from this
Having exhausted my holiday book bag all too quickly I bought this - correctly surmising that it would slow me down. Read more
Published on 31 July 2009 by Dr Enoch
Written from a very unusual perspective
'A Glastonbury Romance' is set in inter-war Britain. It follows the lives of the inhabitants of Glastonbury over the course of a few eventful years in that town's history, and... Read more
Published on 6 Oct 2003 by Depressaholic
Unique
Powys must be one of the strangest authors ever to have written in the English language. Like Dickens, he revels in character, but unlike Dickens, his baroque, time-slowed flights... Read more
Published on 1 May 2003 by Murray
Prose that lifts you into a sensuous world!
In 'A Glastonbury Romance' John Cowper Powys has given us one of England's greatest epic novels. Examining how a pagan myth that has become overlaid with Christian symbolism... Read more
Published on 25 Jun 2000
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