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Amazon.co.uk Review
Glen Duncan’s I, Lucifer begins one steamy summer as some heavy negotiations are taking place in Heaven. God has decided to give Lucifer, the furthest-fallen of all fallen angels, a second chance. The Prince of Darkness can return to the fold, provided he manages to last one month on earth without sin. The human form chosen for this celestial experiment? A depressed novelist of little renown, currently contemplating suicide in his Clerkenwell garret.
Lucifer eagerly grasps the opportunity for a holiday on earth, and uses his host’s identity to re-write the story of Creation in a format that has Hollywood moguls kissing his feet. It’s not popular with Him Upstairs, of course, what with the Devil being portrayed as a maverick free-thinker and God as a humourless autocrat. But Lucifer’s having too much fun to care. He’s experiencing the pleasures of the flesh for the first time and everything – the odour of sweaty tube trains, cocaine, ice-cream, dirty sex--delights him. By the time the archangels are dispatched to bring him back, the Lord of all that’s inhumane can’t think of anything he’d rather be than human.
Lucifer befogs his audience, alternately spitting fury at them like some sulphur-charged Dennis Leary and then insisting that he’s a nice guy, just misunderstood. What’s clear, however, is that Glen Duncan is not merely one of those writers who can come up with amusing concepts. He’s a sharp, sometimes savage observer of the human condition, whose talents are as many as the legions of Hell.--Matthew Baylis --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Matthew Baylis
'Duncan is a sharp, sometimes savage observer of the human condition, whose talents are as many as the legions of Hell'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
This Devil's a Charmer,
By Monty Archibald "HeavyMetalMonty" (west coast of Scotland) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE)
This review is from: I, Lucifer (Paperback)
From a descriptive-writing perspective, this book is almost flawless. Glen Duncan has the ability to engage all the senses of the reader, and to do so in a way I've never seen bettered. Were I to review this book purely on the power of its evocative descriptions, it'd earn five stars without a doubt. I could overlook the peppering of grammatical misdemeanours (comma-spliced sentences; commas where they don't belong; missing commas where they do belong; several instances of using 'her' where the correct pronoun is 'she'), as they don't happen frequently enough to impede one's enjoyment of the text. They're niggles, that's all. Those schoolboy errors do, however, draw attention to the irony that - while he has developed a writing style which is heavily reliant on long, esoteric words - Glen Duncan never mastered the basic mechanics of the English language. He gets the difficult stuff incredibly right, but sometimes trips up on primary-school basics. Strange indeed. His writing is the literary equivalent of a sparkling gold Rolls Royce with breathtaking aesthetics and a sense of majesty, yet a peek under the bonnet reveals a few clunks and rattles in the heart of the machine. I couldn't shake the impression that Duncan often uses the longest word for the job, rather than the best one. Yes, he's an artiste who wants to impress with sweeping flourishes of poetic language, but Norman MacCaig - perhaps the greatest of all poets - would have advised, "Study brevity." Sometimes the epic multisyllabic prose works beautifully, but it can begin to feel more than a little pretentious.
As for the story, it's not particularly original; God offers Lucifer a sabbatical from Hell in the form of a one-month inhabitance inside the body of a recent suicide victim, writer Declan Gunn (an anagram of Glen Duncan), as a chance for the Devil to achieve redemption and stand once again at the side of his Maker. Duncan's description of Lucifer's overwhelming joy - and surprise - upon experiencing the world through human senses is gorgeously creative. True to his hedonistic reputation, Lucifer goes on to overstimulate all his human senses through every vice available as he follows his own agenda. As weeks pass, the fallen angel comes to see existence from a human perspective. He even feels flashes of empathy for humankind. Duncan's Lucifer is a foppish luvvie, a bisexual lecher, a seducer who charms humans into committing evil deeds. The luscious descriptions of human sensual experience are so vivid that they jar the reader out of his/her taking-them-for-granted attitude towards the senses. Whether you love or hate it, this book reintroduces the reader to the miracle that is human perception in all its forms. Glen Duncan writes with an authentic voice, descriptive flair and a passion for words which is palpable. If he ever gets around to truly mastering the nuts and bolts of grammar, while retaining his unique voice and breathtaking descriptive ability, then Duncan could become England's equivalent to Salman Rushdie. Until then, perhaps it is appropriate that this story - impressive as it is - contains the little flaws which make it all the more human. Just like the experience of its main protagonist.
27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The prince of darkness is a gentleman....William Shakespeare,
By Moondust (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: I, Lucifer (Paperback)
A friend of mine works in a bookstore and recommended I,Lucifer a couple of years ago. He knows my taste in books so I thought I'd give it a try. Saying that it's a page-turner, that I couldn't put it down even after I had read it twice over, is a huge understatement. Truth is, the reader is immediately drawn into witnessing a series of events and afterthoughts that are unbelievably funny, cheeky, wicked and dark at the same time. Before long, I found myself empathising with Lucifer....at which point, having been a sad soul entrapped in a catholic convent school for many years, I felt compelled to put the book down and tell myself "It's Lucifer, for God's sake! You're feeling sorry for THE DEVIL". Well...it is at this stage that Duncan's work should be appreciated beyond it's literary value....because despite the nuns' influence and years of daily doses of guilt tripping, I picked the book back up and said "Yeah...so what?!"
Read it.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best Glen Duncan work so far,
By J. C. Way (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: I, Lucifer (Paperback)
I suppose I have to preface this review by saying that I am already a Glen Duncan fan, and have read all of his published novels save The Bloodstone Papers (on the reading list). At the point of my first reading of 'I, Lucifer', I had only read one other - 'Weathercock', which rocked my world and left me wanting more.
If 'Weathercock' ended up hovering around the top of my 'favourite reads' list, 'I, Lucifer' shot straight to first place. Where some of Duncan's books fall down is in the personality of the protagonist, frequently a young man musing on life after a catastrophic emotional event - they sometimes end up infuriating me with their whininess. Not so here. Lucifer has suffered, yes, has possibly been done wrong to, and yes, he complains about it; but his ultimate motive is to win over the reader, and so he narrates charmingly, persuasively and wittily. Even while sympathising with the Devil, though, you are being shown his flaws. The more obvious ones he doesn't attempt to deny (namely, his urge to do evil), but there is more to him. This becomes more pronounced a subject towards the end of the book. Glen Duncan's style is perhaps, as has been said, self-indulgent, but also wonderfully descriptive. He says exactly what he wants to say, sometimes in less, sometimes in more words. And what's more, what he's saying is often what a lot of us would rather ignore. He pinions human nature perfectly, using his fallen angel.
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