- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC; New edition edition (16 Oct 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747551650
- ISBN-13: 978-0747551652
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 737,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
The summer of 1967 - the summer of "A Whiter Shade of Pale", "Mellow Yellow" and "Sgt Pepper". Peter is into path-working meditations, backwards causation, easy sex and drugs. There is acid on the streets and darker things are on the move.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I bought this book after reading Irwin's "Arabian Nightmare" and being very impressed by the mix of erudition, atmosphere and deft storytelling. While this novel is perhaps not quite so assured (Irwin is, apparently, a scholar of Arabic history), it is still an excellent read, full of dark portents and hints of deeper mysteries which kept me turning the pages well into the night. Unlike The Arabian Nightmare - which is a story of different stories that sometimes advance and sometimes hinder the main plot - Satan Wants Me is written in diary form. While this technique can sometimes be constrictive to an author, Irwin uses this format in a playfull and highly engaging manner - making it almost a character in the story in its own right. For this is a diary which (in a perverse inversion of the usual nature of a diary as a private repository of personal feelings) is meant to be read: it is one of the exercises which the "Black Lodge" he has joined require of him. Twice a week his journal is read by his satanic mentor, and it's contents are mintutely criticised. I think this is the strongest point of the book - the main character is selfish, spiteful, immature; utterly unsympathetic, and yet you do feel for sorry for him as you wince at the honesty of what he writes, knowing as you do that it will soon be read by someone else (often by the person he is actually writing about). Which brings me to the main element of this book - it is very, very funny. Laugh-out-loud funny, in fact. It is at once deeply serious and deeply farcical, erudite yet with a lightness of touch which makes it both unsettling and hilarious at the same time. In short, a book well worth reading. Some nice twists in it too. I'll finish with a paraphrase which summed up the tone of the book - "Perhaps it was the Methedrine coursing through my system which made the streets of London seem like a nexus of satanic possibilities. A crossroads of spiritual development. One road led to life, another to death. A third led to life-in-death. And the fourth led to the Post Office." Great stuff. Buy and enjoy.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Kinda weird this. Summer of '67 well evoked. I loved the passage where Johnny Kidd [late of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates] acts as Virgil conducting the protagonist through the lower regions of the Inferno. Acid trip induced wouldn't you know! Anyhow they encounter Russ Conway playing The Moonlight Sonata. Hell indeed!!
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
I had a weird relationship with this book. It took me a while to get through, it didn't really grip me, and yet, when I finished it I immediately wanted to read it again. There's really two different novels here - one is a Withnail type comedy of late 60s bohemian life, the other is a pretty dark look at Satanism and its insidious power. I found the last few chapters, or diary entries if you will, focused these 2 elements really well - there's black humour, particularly in the acid trips, but, in the real world, some seriously disturbing stuff is going on. Makes you nostalgic for the 60s yet mighty glad it's over.
Recommended for a read - 3.5 stars is probably a fair score.
Recommended for a read - 3.5 stars is probably a fair score.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not really that funny
The reviews, and the blurb on the book itself, describe the novel as funny, even very funny, but unfortunately I have to disagree. Read more
Published 23 months ago by Steve
Flawed but mildly amusing romp
This is the tale of a 1960s student and his fascination for the occult. Told in the form of a diary, which his sinister mentor at the Black Book Lodge must read, this is a dense,... Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2007 by Archy
The Best I Ever Read
i've had this book for about five years now and i must have read it twice a year mayby more since, i really do enjoy it and only recently sought out more of robert irwins books,... Read more
Published on 16 Nov 2006 by Lucie-Marie
Very Funny in Places but Suddenly goes all Serious
The first half of this book is very enjoyable and funny. It is a pastiche of 60's London and the occult and the author has a good time having a dig at both targets, to good effect. Read more
Published on 24 Oct 2002 by J. Bloss
Robert Irwin is a scarily clever writer
Great plot; superb, vividly drawn, fascinating, varied characterisations; clear, effective prose; marvellous, sick, immature, self-centred bad behaviour; the blackest of black... Read more
Published on 3 Sep 2001 by Tinfoilhat
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